WYOMING, Mich. (WOOD) — The guest of a Wyoming man believed to have killed his girlfriend and two of her children before turning the gun on himself said he doesn’t know how it could have happened, but the woman’s family says she was afraid of him.
On Wednesday, police identified the woman as Liliana Landa-Sanchez, 34. Also killed were her daughters, 13-year-old Joelin Hernandez-Landa and 11-year-old Ayzy Hernandez-Landa.
Police said the girls attended San Juan Diego Academy, a Catholic school in Wyoming.
A GoFundMe account has been created to help Landa-Sanchez’s family pay to bring her and her daughters to Mexico, where her sister lives, to be buried.
The man believed to have killed them and then himself was Oscar Moran-Hernandez, 43. State police records do not show a criminal history for him in Michigan, though Wyoming police previously said he was accused of drunken driving in 2003.
The apparent triple murder-suicide happened in the early hours of Tuesday at a home on Godfrey Avenue SW south of Burton Street. The Wyoming Department of Public Safety says a family member went to the home after getting a concerning call from Moran-Hernandez. The family member then called police. When officers arrived, Joelin, Ayzy, Landa-Sanchez and Moran-Hernandez were dead.
On Wednesday, a makeshift memorial grew outside the home. There were bouquets of flowers and stuffed animals on the front porch. Several candles were arranged in the shape of a cross.
“I love you,” read a note pinned to a purple teddy bear, followed by a small heart drawn in red marker. “Rest in peace. I’ll miss you!”
A friend visiting from Maryland told News 8 on Wednesday that he and his family were inside the house, sleeping in another room, when the shooting happened.
“When we heard those gunshots, my family got scared and we ran outside,” Santos Avalos said.
He said he doesn’t know why Moran-Hernandez did what he did. He didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary as the two families spent the holiday weekend together.
“When we got here, the kids were very happy, they were playful, they were playing with the pool,” Avalos said. “Everything seemed normal.”
“Of what I know of from the past, he’s never been such a violent person,” Avalos added of Moran-Hernandez. “We were just like everyone else who knows him. We can’t believe it.”
But via Facebook Messenger and with help from a translator, Landa-Sanchez’s sister told News 8 she was worried about Landa-Sanchez and Moran-Hernandez’s relationship.
“I believe she was afraid of him… He would humiliate and mistreat her constantly,” Maria Josefina wrote in Spanish.
Three other children, ages 9, 5 and 2, were in the home when the shooting happened but weren’t hurt. At least two of those children belonged both Landa-Sanchez and Moran-Hernandez. Joelin and Ayzy were Landa-Sanchez’s children from a previous relationship. The three children have been placed in the care of a family member.
“No one, especially children, should ever feel unsafe in their home,” Wyoming DPS Chief Kim Koster said Tuesday. “This is a devastating example of domestic violence.”
Wyoming has seen a total of six homicides this year and all were related to domestic situations.
“We had seen an increase (in domestic violence) in the era of COVID when the pandemic first hit. We were seeing increases of 25% to 35% in domestic violence cases kind of across aboard and that number really hasn’t leveled off,” Charisse Mitchell of the YWCA in Grand Rapids told News 8 Tuesday.
She reminded people there are resources out there. The National Domestic Violence Helpline can be reached at 800.799.7233 and the YWCA in Grand Rapids can be reached at 616.454.9922.
—News 8’s Kyle Mitchell contributed to this report.