A mother of four may have been strangled in her Compton home before she died, and her boyfriend is being held as a person of interest in her death, sheriff's officials said Friday.
Deputies responded to a back house in the 12800 block of South Stoneacre Avenue around 2:30 a.m., where they found a woman in her 30s who was unresponsive and appeared to have been strangled, sheriff's officials said. She was taken to a hospital where she was pronounced dead.
The woman's boyfriend, who lived with her, and her 15-year-old son were the only other people home at the time of the incident.
"Detectives have learned" her boyfriend contacted family members living in the front house and told them "he needed to show them something," said Lt. Rodney Moore of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department's Homicide Bureau.
When family members went into the woman's home, they found her lying unresponsive on the floor.
"The boyfriend is being held as a person of interest," Moore said.
The couple's four children, who are all 15 years old or younger, are going into protective custody. It was not immediately clear if the 15-year-old had witnessed the incident, Moore said.
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Neighbor Kesha Williams was shocked by the news of what happened.
"I'm a mother of four," she said. "I can't imagine what her kids are going through."
