A Pennsylvania mother commits suicide after killing her two children
This week's deaths of a Pennsylvania woman and her two children have been declared suicide and murder amid a controversial divorce between the mother and her husband, People confirms.
Carola Arnau, 40, was found dead in her home in flames in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, early Tuesday morning, authorities said.
The bodies of her two children, a 4-year-old boy and a 10-year-old daughter, were discovered near their beds.
Arnau died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound in the head, an officer from the Lancaster County coroner's office told People.
Authorities believe she shot her daughter several times in the head and her son in the body several times while they slept, and then committed suicide.
At a press conference on Tuesday, officials said earlier in the morning, Arnau set fire to his house, fired his children and then took her life with her handgun, which she had bought the day before. The exact order of events - the shooting and the fire - is still unclear.
"It seems that [children] shot them in their sleep, and there would not have been any fighting, as pathetic as it's comfortable that sounds," Lancaster County prosecutor Craig Stedman told reporters.
Arnau's husband, the children's father, was working at the time of the blaze, but he tried to run inside the house when he arrived on the scene, according to Lancaster Online. Officials arrested him.
According to investigators, Arnau and her husband were in the middle of a "bitter" divorce, Stedman said Tuesday. While Arnau and her children lived in the main house, her husband lived in a separate garage from the main structure.
Stedman said officials are investigating the couple's history and Arnau's mental health. The deceased had been receiving treatment prior to the incident, according to a statement issued by the district attorney's office.
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