A 32-year-old Torrance-area woman was found guilty Monday of three counts of first-degree murder for fatally stabbing her three little girls, who ranged in age from 2 months to 2 1/2 years, inside the family’s home last year.
Carol Ann Coronado was convicted by a judge in the deaths of 2-year-old Sophia, 16-month-old Yazmine and 2-month-old Xenia, according to the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office.
The children were found by their grandmother on May 20, 2014, in the West 223rd Street home Coronado shared with her husband in an unincorporated area between Torrance and Carson, according to a news release from the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department.
Arriving deputies were met outside by family members who said that “a mother had killed her children,” the release stated.
Inside the residence, deputies found the three young girls lying in a pool of blood on a bed with their mother, who was naked and holding a knife, investigators said at the time.
After her arrest, Coronado pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity and waived her right to a jury trial, according to the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office.
She was scheduled to return to court Tuesday to begin the sanity phase of her trial.
If she is found to have been sane when the crime occurred, she faces life in prison without the possibility of parole.
