“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 cared for other people’s children without having a license. for it.
Store, Ecuadorian immigrant 36 years old, had fought for a long time against the 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”, Naulaguari stated.
“I’m sorry, Pedro, I’m taking my children”
Sonia Loja
The husband saw no signs of the coming tragedy and only realized that something might be wrong when he got home from work on wednesday and none of the children ran out to greet him as usual, relatives said.
“I feel terrible,” Panjon said yesterday, speaking briefly in Spanish outside the family’s home at 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, he added.
According to her cousin, when Panjón arrived home on Wednesday she found the door locked, something that never happened there. “When the kids didn’t go out… that’s when her heart broke,” because she felt something must be very wrong, her relative said.
Panjon, who works as a landscaper and carpenter, She ran into the kitchen, dropped 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,’” Naulaguari said. “He didn’t read anything else, he put the letter away. She still hasn’t read it” completely.
She then ran into a room, where she found her 12-year-old son, Junior Panjón, on the floor and her daughter Joselyn (10) in bed, both with wires, possibly electrical, around the neck. “He removed the cables, 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 his 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 went out to the patio to ask a neighbor for help and collapsed on the ground. He was later taken to a hospital.
Officers responding at approximately 6:33 p.m. Wednesday found Loja hanging in her backyard shed, near a swing set and toys that had been used by children at 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,'” said neighbor Elvis Espinal. to the 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 Connecticut State Medical Examiner’s Office confirmed Loja’s cause of death as suicide by hanging, the newspaper reported. Hartford Courant.
I looked for help
- Call to 1.888.NYCWELL (1.888.692.9355).
- Send the text message “WELL” a 65173.
- Check information on https://nycwell.cityofnewyork.us/es/