Family's killing stuns strapped L.A. community

updated 9:33 p.m. ET Jan. 31, 2009

LOS ANGELES - Before the unspeakable horror that struck the tan stucco house on McFarland Avenue, the blue-collar folks who labor and live in the community called Wilmington had suffered their fair share — not unlike other Americans.

Homes in foreclosure. Refinery workers mulling a strike. Cutbacks at the nearby Port of Los Angeles, where some longshoremen haven't found employment in months. A drive past the taquerias and body shops, past a beauty parlor tagged with graffiti, finds a man pushing a shopping cart, stopping to dig through a stranger's trash can.

The people of Wilmington know what it means to feel fed up and stretched thin, to survive on one income or none at all, to struggle to afford basics and leave a grocery store "still feeling miserable," as one man said.

Perhaps this explains why, when tragedy came to their community, that street and that house, they responded with outrage, anguish and grief. Whether or not the slaughter on McFarland Avenue can be truly blamed on America's economic crisis, Ervin Lupoe's neighbors felt a kinship with a man who claimed that desperate times had driven him to commit the ultimate evil.

The story spread quickly across California and beyond: A man, fired from his job, shot and killed his wife, 8-year-old daughter and two sets of twins, 2-year-old boys and 5-year-old girls, before shooting himself.

Both Lupoe, 40, and his wife, Ana, 38, had been fired recently from their jobs as hospital technicians at Kaiser Permanente Medical Center West Los Angeles. Police say they had lied about their income to try to get cheaper child care.

Other financial pressures mounting
Lupoe also owed the Internal Revenue Service at least $15,000 and a check to the agency had bounced; he was a month behind on his mortgage and owed $2,500, a late fee, plus thousands more on a home equity line of credit.

In the face of all of this, Lupoe took his children out of school, packed his SUV with snow chains and winter clothing and appeared ready to leave California for his brother-in-law's home in Garden City, Kan.

Instead, he faxed a rambling letter to a local TV news station Tuesday morning describing his "tragic story" and claiming a hospital administrator told him he "should not even had bothered to come to work" and "should have blown (his) brains out." That same morning, he called his brother-in-law, investigators said, and informed him he had killed his family.

The twin boys, Benjamin and Christian, were discovered by police in an upstairs bedroom beside their mother. The twin girls, Jaszmin and Jassely, and their big sister Brittney lay on a mattress pad in another room next to their lifeless father.

'Perils and dangers'
As word got out and distraught neighbors descended on the scene, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa stood at a press conference and reminded his constituents that help is available in these economic hard times. The crime, he said, should serve "as a warning and a lesson to all of us about the perils and dangers of this current situation."

Then he provided phone numbers for employment help centers in one breath, mental health professionals in the next.

AP file Ervin Antonio Lupoe's Facebook Web page shows Ervin Antonio Lupoe, top left, his wife, Ana, top right, and their five children: Brittney, top, twin girls Jaszmin and Jassely and twin boys Benjamin and Christian.

Ohio Congressman Dennis Kucinich put it far more bluntly, dispatching a statement urging passage of the latest economic stimulus plan. The headline: "This Economy is Literally Killing People." It cited the Lupoe murder-suicide and other tragedies, including an elderly man who froze to death in his Michigan home because he couldn't pay his electric bill.

"Times are hard," said Rick Albis, a refinery operator in Wilmington.

Albis is helping union workers battle ConocoPhillips for better wages, and when he first heard about the carnage on McFarland Avenue, he feared that one of his co-workers had pulled the trigger. "Everybody is feeling the squeeze," he said.

When Robert Banuelos lost steady employment as a furniture mover, he moved back in with his mother, one street over from McFarland Avenue. He rode his bike to buy a prayer candle to place in front of the Lupoe house.

"If you're single, you can take care of yourself," he said. "But you've got a family ... and a wife? Going to the market, you're struggling just to buy the necessities. You have to say, 'OK, I can't buy that; I can buy this.' And by the time you walk out of the store, you're still feeling miserable."

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