DAVIE, Fla. – A man fatally shot his 11-year-old, terminally ill daughter before killing himself in their South Florida home on Monday, police said.
“It was a devastating terminal illness,” Davie police spokesman Lt. Mark Leone told news outlets. “She was not going to get any better. ... It is such a tragic situation, a terrible situation.”
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The shooting happened Monday as the girl's mother was cooking, police said.
Leone said the child was the couple's only child. The mother found the daughter dead and the father was taken to a hospital, where he later died.
“It is devastating,” Leone said of the father’s apparent murder-suicide. “It’s a lose-lose situation.” Police had not released the names of the victims because some relatives had not yet been notified.
The child was born on Mother’s Day 2009. She was diagnosed with cancer in her femur and was scheduled to have the leg amputated on Aug. 28 in Boston, family members told the South Florida Sun Sentinel. That day would have also been the parents’ 27 wedding anniversary, the newspaper reported.
Miriam Casanova, whose husband, Jorge, is the cousin of the little child’s mother, told the newspaper the parents had been distraught over the illness. The last time they called, Casanova said the father could barely speak through all the tears. “He couldn’t talk,” she said. “He just cried.”