Amy Hunter arrived at a parking lot near her home in West Sacramento on New Year’s Eve to pick up her daughters, Sara, 9 and Sophie, 12.
The spot near West Sacramento’s City Hall was the designated drop-off point for the girls, whose parents had been involved in a custody battle for years, said Julie Jenkins, who knows Hunter and owns the Caring Connection Children’s Center, where Hunter worked as a teacher.
This time, she said, the girls never got out of the car.
They were later declared dead at UC Davis Medical Center in what West Sacramento Police said was a murder-suicide by their father, Hamdy Rouin, 46, a Tunisian immigrant who was also found dead in the car. Police said there were no visible injuries on the girls, and their cause of death had not been released as of Tuesday afternoon.
In court filings, Hunter described Rouin as an abusive husband and heavy drinker who had hit her, threatened to throw the cat out the car window and told her he would take the girls away to Tunisia. Rouin was scheduled to appear Tuesday morning in Yolo Superior Court for violating a protective order, court records show. [Read Full Article]