Man shoots his entire family, then himself, after losing his job

A medical technician killed his wife, five children and then himself yesterday after learning that he had been sacked from his job.

Ervin Antonio Lupoe faxed a letter to a local TV station in Los Angeles claiming that his wife had suggested they kill themselves and their children so as not to face poverty as a family.

According to the station, KABC-TV, Mr Lupoe wrote: “Why leave the children to a stranger?”

He then shot his wife Ana and their children – an eight-year-old girl, twin five-year-old girls and twin two-year-old boys – before turning the gun on himself at the family home in the suburb of Wilmington.

Police urged people facing tough economic times not to take drastic action or resort to violence.

“Today our worst fear was realised,” said LA deputy chief Kenneth Garner. “It’s just not a solution. There’s just so many ways you find alternatives to doing something so horrific and drastic as this”.

Police would not release details of the faxed letter, however the TV station reported that Lupoe had detailed workplace problems. He wrote that a medical centre administrator had rebuffed him and his wife, also an employee, when they arrived at work and said “you should have blown your brains out”.

After receiving the fax, the station called the police, around the same time that a man, believed to be Lupoe, phoned an emergency line and said: “I just returned home and my whole family’s been shot.”

Officers could still smell the gunshot residue when they arrived at the Lupoe home to find the family dead and a revolver lying next to Ervin’s body.

Police said despite that Lupoe’s claim in the fax that his wife Ana was somehow involved, he was the main suspect in the murder-suicide.

Police also said the couple had recently pulled the older children out of school, saying the family was moving to Kansas.

“He was going through some critical situations at the job, that’s what he described in that two-page letter, and that’s what prompted him to take his own life and his family’s,” Officer Garner said.

A spokesman for the hospital group which runs the Kaiser Permanente West Los Angeles Medical Centre where the Lupoes worked confirmed that the couple’s jobs were “recently terminated”.

“We are deeply saddened to hear of the tragic deaths of Ana, Ervin and their five children,” Kaiser said in a statement to the LA Times. “We are providing support to Kaiser Permanente employees.”

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