Catorreia Hutto jumped off the S.R 417 bridge into Lake Jesup, authorities said. Investigators found her five-year-old twins, Ahmad and Ava Jackson, dead at home. (Screenshots: NBC News)
After a woman fatally jumped into a lake, investigators found her 5-year-old twins dead at home. The Seminole County Sheriff’s Office in Florida said the children’s manner of death is unknown and autopsy results are pending, but authorities are nonetheless labeling this as a murder-suicide.
“At approximately 8:45 a.m., deputies received multiple calls from motorists who stated a woman got out of the passenger side of a car parked on the shoulder of the S.R 417 bridge and jumped into Lake Jesup,” deputies wrote on Friday.
Deputies found her floating in the water and got the help from boaters in order to recover the body.
Authorities identified the woman as Catorreia Hutto, 31, of Sanford. She was dead at the scene.
Investigators said they then learned that she was the mother of twin 5-year-olds. But the children were neither in her car nor in the water.
They checked out her home, only to find the kids, Ahmad and Ava Jackson, dead inside.
The twins had no apparent signs of trauma, deputies said.
Seminole County Sheriff Dennis Lemma also said there was no apparent blood, and though there was a gun nearby on the ground with live rounds, it did not look like the kids had been shot. Authorities did not find any empty or filed cartridge cases, according to NBC News.
“It does not appear that there is any blunt trauma,” Lemma said, according to WESH. “It does not appear that they are the victims of gunfire. So there would have to be a method of death that the medical examiner can help us understand through toxicology reports, but again, no signs of trauma to the body. And the two deputies who went in said it looked like two innocent 5-year-olds sleeping.”
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Lemma noted there was “not much food” in the home, according to NBC. The residence is about seven miles north of the bridge.
Hutto did clerical jobs for a temp agency, last working several days before she killed herself, he told reporters.
“The family might have been struggling financially,” he said.
He noted they got the home through the nonprofit organization Habitat for Humanity.
According to Lemma, the family had no reports with the sheriff’s office or the Florida Department of Children and Families.
“[Hutto’s] mom did relay to us that she has struggled throughout her lifetime with depression, but nothing to say she would act out with this level of violence with her children,” he said in the WESH report.
“The entire UCP community is deeply saddened by the sudden passing of two of our Seminole County school’s kindergarten students and feel shocked by the circumstances,” CEO and Superintendent Dr. Ilene E. Wilkins of UCP of Central Florida/UCP Charter Schools reportedly said. “We immediately made available grief counseling for classmates, teachers, and school family members.”
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