Lawsuit claims LAPD, social workers ignored warnings before mother killed 3 young kids
LOS ANGELES - A lawsuit was filed against the city of Los Angeles and Los Angeles County by the father who lost his three children, ages 3, 2, and 6 months after they were found slain inside their mother's Reseda apartment.
The mother, Liliana Carrillo, admitted to drowning them in a television interview.
Erik Denton filed the lawsuit Thursday and claimed social workers with the county's Department of Children and Family Services and the Los Angeles Police Department did not take his concerns seriously and failed to thoroughly investigate the reported issues.
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A Los Angeles Times investigation corroborates the fact the county’s child welfare agency and Los Angeles police were contacted multiple times regarding Carrillo’s behavior that made it unsafe for the children to be under her care.
According to the lawsuit, there were more than a dozen times when officers and social workers were in violation of the California Child Abuse and Neglect Reporting Act, and they did not remove the young children from her care before their deaths.
"We will review the complaint and have no comment," city officials said in response to the lawsuit.
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On the morning of April 10, 2021, the three young children were found dead inside their mother’s apartment located in the 8000 block of Reseda Boulevard. No one else was inside the apartment at the time, which prompted a search for a suspect.
Los Angeles police investigators later identified Carrillo as a person of interest in the triple homicide before she was taken into custody in Tulare County in Central California.
In a jailhouse interview with KGET based in Bakersfield, Carrillo admitted to killing her three children.
"I drowned them. I did it as softly…I don’t know how to explain it. I hugged them. I kissed them. I was apologizing the whole time. I loved my kids," she said during the interview.
A relative told FOX 11 last spring Carrillo and Denton were in the middle of a tense custody battle.
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