A Florida mother came across a heart-wrenching scene and screamed loud enough to alert an entire neighborhood to her heartache.
On the morning of February 8, 2022, Miami-Dade police say an unidentified man picked up his 9-year-old son and 12-year-old daughter from his ex-wife's home. The woman became concerned when she could not reach any of them and tracked them down to the Miami Lakes area, near a lake on a residential block that also has a Publix nearby.
When she walked up to the lake, she came across a horrifying scene. Her ex-husband and two children lay shot dead, with a gun near her ex's hand.
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A woman who lived on the block heard the mother screaming in the street and immediately ran to her to help. The neighbor's son followed her to the scene, where she initially thought the little boy had drowned. Because this occurred at night, she was unable to see the other two bodies lying there from the direction she approached from.
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"After I heard her screaming, I just opened the door and I ran," Magda Peña told Local News 10.
"My son ran behind me. He didn't even have shoes. I ran across the grass and when I got there, I saw the lady on top of the little boy. I couldn't see the dad or the daughter because of the darkness at first."
Peña started doing CPR on the boy, believing he had drowned. She stopped to instruct her son to call 911 and noticed his face had gone pale as he spotted the other bodies. The distraught mother dragged her daughter closer to her son and started to work on her as well.
"She was like, 'Please don't stop. They're alive, they're alive. Please don't stop," Peña recalled.
"But they were already all dead."
It was initially reported that the family lived on the block, but police have since corrected that they are not from the area.