Police at both ends of the Bay Area are working on two separate murder-suicide cases that left three young children without parents over the weekend.
The first case happened in San Jose Saturday morning.
Police said a man and a woman were found dead at a strip mall on Capitol Expressway with their 17-month of daughter strapped in a car seat inside her mother's car parked nearby.
The little girl was unharmed and was taken into protective custody by Santa Clara County Child Protective Services, police said.
Police said it was an apparent murder-suicide where the unidentified man killed his former girlfriend before turning the gun on himself. Police were still not releasing the victim's identities.
A similar event happened in Petaluma on Sunday.
Police there said a woman who was leaving her divorce attorney's office was shot and killed by her estranged husband who then turned the gun on himself.
Local
The Press Democrat identified the couple as Kim and Kevin Conover. That couple's twin toddlers were also found near the scene of the shooting, according to the paper, and were also taken into protective custody by authorities.
Friends said Kim Conover was a life long Petaluma resident who worked as a second-grade teacher at Meadow Elementary School.
District Superintendent Robert Cmelak told Bay City News Conover had taught at the school for 12 years.
"She was a teacher of teachers and a trainer of teachers in language arts," Cmelak told BCN. "She was a requested teacher. She was loved. It will be very difficult to fill her void."
Along the twins she had with her estranged husband, Kim Conover had two other children who were also students at Meadow from a previous relationship.
