A man fatally shot his wife, five young children and himself Tuesday after he faxed a note to a TV station claiming the couple had just been fired from their hospital jobs and together planned the killings as an escape for the whole family. “Why leave our children in someone else’s hands,” Ervin Lupoe wrote in a letter posted late Tuesday on the KABC-TV Web site. The station called police after receiving the fax, and a police dispatch center also received a call from a man who stated, “I just returned home and my whole family’s been shot.” Officers rushed to the home in Wilmington, a small community between the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, about 8:30 a.m., apparently within minutes of the killings.

Officers could still smell the gunshot residue in the air, reports The Associated Press. Although the fax asserted that Ana Lupoe planned the killings of the whole family, police Lt. John Romero said Ervin Lupoe was the suspect. A revolver was found next to his body. Ana Lupoe’s body was found in an upstairs bedroom with the bodies of the couple’s twin 2-year-old boys. The bodies of an 8-year-old girl and twin 5-year-old girls were found alongside Ervin Lupoe’s in another bedroom. All were shot in the head, coroner’s Assistant Chief Ed Winter said. Ervin Lupoe removed three of the children from school about a week and a half ago, saying the family was moving to Kansas, the principal told KCAL-TV. Crescent Heights Elementary School Principal Cherise Pounders-Caver said nothing seemed to be troubling Lupoe at that time; she did not ask why the family was moving. Kaiser Permanente Medical Center West Los Angeles released a statement confirming both Lupoe and his wife had worked there; both were medical technicians. “We are deeply saddened to hear of the deaths of the Lupoe family,” it said in a statement. In his letter, Ervin Lupoe claimed he and his wife both had been fired and that she suggested they kill themselves and their children, too. The letter indicated that Lupoe and his wife had been under investigation for misrepresenting their employment to an outside agency in order to obtain childcare.

WE ALL HAVE OUR HARD-TIMES AND I CAN UNDERSTAND THE PRESSURE…TRUST ME I DO!! (I HAVE A FULL HOUSE) BUT I WOULD NEVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER….DO SUCH AN ACT TO THE INNOCENT KIDS. NEVER EVER!!! LETS PRAY.