A father fatally shot his 12-year-old daughter and his 9-year-old son at a Miami Lakes home Tuesday night before killing himself, police said.
The incident began as a domestic dispute at the home in the 6400 block of Miami Lakes Drive, Miami-Dade Police spokesperson Alvaro Zabaleta said.
Officials later identified the father as 41-year-old Humberto Tovar. His children were identified as Baleria, 12, and Matias, 9.
Zabaleta said the man's ex-wife was in the house as well but she was not injured in the shooting, which happened around 9:30 p.m.
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Witnesses said they heard the woman screaming outside of the home after she found the three bodies near a canal.
A Ring doorbell camera from a nearby home captured the sound of the mother screaming for help.
Neighbor Magda Peña said she heard the screaming mother and ran to help.
"I ran out of the house, I bolted over there because I just heard the screaming, the screams were really horrible, they were horrible the screams," Peña said.
Peña said she gave the boy chest compressions as the mother also tried to revive her children.
"I started looking and I saw the man's body there and I saw the little girl's body there, and the mom was trying to do compressions on the little girl, she even pulled her body towards the son's body to bring them closer and she herself started doing chest compressions on them," Peña said. "At that point I was crying already, I think I went into shock cause I was just like freaked out, I don't know."
Miami-Dade Police said the mother of the children had tried to contact her ex-husband since it was a school night and it was getting late, but had gotten no response. Witnesses said the mother had tracked the phone to the neighborhood.
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Residents said they were shocked by the incident in the normally quiet neighborhood.
“When I walked up, there was this older lady that was standing there and she was really nervous, she said yeah, she could hear the lady screaming," said Cardinal Norgwei, who lives nearby. "Supposedly, the mother of the children, and came into the street and some people even said they heard gunshots."
Miami-Dade Police Director Alfredo Ramirez offered his condolences to the family on Twitter late Tuesday.
The incident remains under investigation.
