A 20-year-old mother was being held Tuesday on a $2 million bond on suspicion of first-degree murder after her two children were found dead in car seats<\/p>\n
inside a car, officials said.<\/p>\n
The bodies were found outside the family\u2019s home in the historic mining town of Superior, a historic mining town of about 2,900 people about 60 miles (97<\/p>\n
kilometers) east of Phoenix. Superior interim police chief Christian Ensley said members of his department had called Child Protective Services in early January<\/p>\n
because of concerns about the two children. The state agency said Tuesday it had received two calls about the children, including the one in January, but had<\/p>\n
never found evidence of child neglect or abuse.<\/p>\n
Autopsies were being conducted to determine causes of death of the two-year-old boy and 10-month-old girl and the Pinal County Sheriff\u2019s Office did not<\/p>\n
immediately disclose what evidence had been found.<\/p>\n
The mother was identified as Brittany Velasquez, 20. She was jailed and authorities did not know whether she had a lawyer who could comment on the<\/p>\n
allegations, said sheriff\u2019s spokeswoman Navideh Forghani. The names of the children were not immediately made public.<\/p>\n
A $2 million bond was set during a Tuesday hearing at the Pinal County Adult Detention Facility. She is scheduled to next appear before a judge on April 30.<\/p>\n
Ensley provided few details during an afternoon news conference, including how the children may have died. He said the mother had made the initial call to<\/p>\n
authorities. Pinal County Sheriff Mark Lamb, whose office is helping the small town police department with the investigation, said he was unaware of any stab or<\/p>\n
gunshot wounds to the children.<\/p>\n
Some relatives of the children were inside the home when authorities went to crime scene late Monday night but Forghani said she could not provide information<\/p>\n
about the circumstances of how the children were placed or left in the car or a motive into their killings.<\/p>\n
She declined to discuss the evidence that was discovered but the sheriff\u2019s office said in a statement that it \u201cindicated foul play.\u201d<\/p>\n
During the afternoon news conference, both Ensley and Lamb declined to discuss a possible motive in the case.<\/p>\n
Ensley said the children\u2019s father had died last year and that he knew many members of the Velasquez family.<\/p>\n
The killings were bound to have a real impact on the tight community, the acting police chief added.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is a real blow,\u201d he said. \u201cThis doesn\u2019t happen often.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ensley said his officers had been called to the home where Velasquez was living in early January to investigate a theft and called the state\u2019s Department of<\/p>\n
Child Safety to report possible child abuse or neglect. He did not elaborate.<\/p>\n
The state agency said Tuesday it had received two reports about the children in the past, most recently in early January.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe children showed no visible signs of abuse or neglect,\u201d the agency said in a response to a query from The Associated Press. \u201cThere were no legal grounds<\/p>\n
to remove the children from the parent\u2019s custody.\u201d<\/p>\n
No one answered the door Tuesday at the run-down, one-story brick house in the hardscrabble community where the car containing the children had been<\/p>\n
parked. Ensley confirmed that Velasquez\u2019s grandparents Lorenzo and Sally lived there and the children had been found in a car parked outside.<\/p>\n
Broken wooden furniture, cardboard boxes and a rusted barbeque grill littered the brown, dried up grass in the front yard. Two pickup trucks and a car with its<\/p>\n
hood up sat at the end of dirt driveway. Authorities said the car the children had been in was towed away earlier.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A 20-year-old mother was being held Tuesday on a $2 million bond on suspicion of first-degree murder after her two children were found dead in car seats inside a car, officials said. The bodies were found outside the family\u2019s home in the historic mining town of Superior, a historic mining town of about 2,900 people […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":26257,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26256","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26256","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26256"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26256\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26258,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26256\/revisions\/26258"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26257"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26256"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26256"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26256"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}