“I’m sorry, Pedro, I’m taking my children,” Sonia Loja wrote in a letter to her husband Pedro Panjón before strangling their three children and hanging herself in their home in Danbury (Connecticut), where she also took care of children. outsiders without having a license to do so.
Loja, Ecuadorian immigrant from 36 years, had long battled depression and had been crying for days over the closure of her illegal child care business, she told the New York Post a cousin of her husband, Digna Naulaguari (47).
Loja suffered from depression, which had not been treated because she did not have health insurance and it was “too expensive to go to the doctor,” said Naulaguari.
“I am sorry, Pedro, I’m taking my children”
Sonia Loja
The husband saw no signs of the coming tragedy and only realized something might be wrong when he got home from work on Wednesday and none of the children rushed out to greet him as usual, the officials said. relatives.
“I feel terrible,” Panjón said yesterday, speaking briefly in Spanish outside the family’s home in 10 Whaley Street, where mourners had already left a makeshift memorial with photos, candles and balloons. “There was nothing wrong with how Sonia acted” before the tragedy, she added.
According to her cousin, when Panjón arrived home on Wednesday she found that the door was locked, something that never happened over there. “When the children didn’t go out… that’s when her heart broke,” because she felt something must be very wrong, said the relative.
Panjón, who works as a landscaper and carpenter, ran in into the kitchen, left her lunch box and saw the two-page suicide note, her cousin explained.
“The letter said: ‘I’m sorry, Pedro , I’m taking my children,’” said Naulaguari. “He didn’t read anything else, he pushed the letter away. He still hasn’t read it” completely.
Then he ran into a room, where he found his son of 12 years old, Junior Panjón, on the floor and his daughter Joselyn (10) in bed, both with cables, possibly electrical, around their necks. “He removed the wires, hoping to hear life, but it was already too late,” said Naulaguari.
The youngest boy, Jonael (5), was in another room, also with a cord around the neck. The distraught father called the police when he couldn’t find his wife, but a dispatcher was having a hard time understanding him, so he went out into the yard to ask a neighbor for help and collapsed on the ground. He was then taken to a hospital.
The officers who responded at approximately 6: 33 Wednesday pm Loja was found hanging in her backyard shed, near a swing set and toys that had been used by children in her illegal daycare. His recent troubles over his illicit business, which earned him two citations last month, exacerbated his mental condition, the cousin said.
On Monday, Loja called her sister in Westchester County to tell her that he hadn’t slept in days because he was “under a lot of stress,” Naulaguari said. Her sister promised to visit her this weekend with other family members. “Two days later, she was gone.”
“Yesterday morning (Wednesday), just before 10, a guy came to drop off his son and she came to the door and said, ‘No, I’m sorry, I can’t see him today,'” neighbor Elvis Espinal told New York Post. “She had called all the other parents of the children she cared for (…) to tell them not to come that day.”
The Office of the Medical Examiner of the The state of Connecticut confirmed Loja’s cause of death as suicide by hanging, reported the Hartford Courant. I looked for help
- Call 1.888.NYCWELL (1.888.692.9355).
- Text “WELL” to 65173.
- Check information at https://nycwell.cityofnewyork.us/es/65173