A woman and three children were found shot dead Tuesday evening in their Kenner home, a pistol lying nearby. The house had been seized for delinquent payments on the mortgage, and police said it appeared the woman killed the children then took her own life.
Kenner police were called about 5:30 p.m. to 3821 East Louisiana State Drive. The woman's companion, Ronald Peters, had arrived home from work after being away since 6 a.m., police said
He called out to his family and, receiving no response, went upstairs where he found all four bodies in a bed, the woman's body lying across those of the children, Chief Steve Caraway said.
A semiautomatic pistol was lying at the foot of the bed, and Caraway said investigators will check the woman's hands for powder burns.
The motive for the shootings was not known, but police said preliminary indications are that the woman killed the children, then herself.
"What causes that? What leads somebody to do that?" Caraway said.
He identified the dead as Nadia Braxton, 29, Kayla Peters, 12, Nayah Peters, 1 1/2 and Nyla Peters, 6 months. Braxton and the two younger children were shot in the forehead, Caraway said. Because the bodies had not yet been moved, the location of Kayla's wounds was not immediately known.
Braxton bought the house for $110,000 on July 22, 2005, barely a month before Hurricane Katrina struck, according to real estate records. She and Peters obtained a Road Home grant in 2007 and mortgaged the property for $119,500, according to the records.
On Jan. 12, 2010, Nationstar Mortgage LLC sued the couple in 24th Judicial District Court in Gretna, saying they hadn't paid the note since September 2009. They owed $117,419, the company asserted. The Jefferson Parish Sheriff's Office seized the property in preparation for a public auction.
But on March 10, 2010, the mortgage company moved to dismiss the case, saying the loan payments had been brought up to date, according to court records.
Yet eight months later on Nov. 3, Nationstar again sued, saying the couple owed $126,639 and hadn't paid anything since April. The Sheriff's Office seized the property again on Dec. 15.
Neighbors Ernest and Doris Stewart said the man who found the bodies lived in the same house with his mother before she died. Since living there with his wife and children, Doris Stewart said, there has "never been a disturbance."
The man was outside most every weekend washing his sport utility vehicle, Ernest Stewart said. He recalled regularly seeing the woman take the older child to school.
