Coast children, ages 5 and 3, killed by mother in murder-suicide, Texas officials say
Two young Gautier children will be laid to rest this weekend in Mississippi after being killed in a triple murder-suicide in Texas.
Services will be Saturday for 5-year-old Clara Marie Deitering, a pre-Kindergarten student at Sacred Heart Catholic School in D’Iberville, and her brother, 3-year-old Robert Alexander Deitering.
The children and their grandmother, Galina Taypina, 68, were found dead April 27 in San Antonio, Texas, MySanAntonio.com reported.
Fox News station KABB in San Antonio, reported that investigators say Karina Sornoza Deitering, 37, shot and killed her young children and mother before turning the gun on herself.
The report said their father found their bodies on April 27 at his estranged wife’s apartment in San Antonio. The children’s parents had been in a custody fight and police say the mother had recently lost custody.
The children are survived by their father, Jason Deitering, and paternal grandparents, Robert and Dawn Kuehnel of Gautier.
Jason Deitering owns Yeastie Beastie Homebrew Supply Shop in D’Iberville, said attorney Charles Hardy, a family law attorney in San Antonio who has represented Deitering for about a year and a half.
“He and his parents are just wonderful people,” Hardy said.
He also knew the children and said, “They were adorable kids. They were inquisitive and they loved their daddy.”
Hardy said the wife wanted to go to Texas for a job, although it turns out there was no job. By agreement, the children lived with the mother for three weeks and the father for three weeks while custody was being determined.
A clinical psychologist investigated the families, and Hardy said a judge “determined that it was in the children’s best interest to live primarily with the father in Mississippi until the trial of the case.”
Shortly after, the mother killed their children, a reaction Hardy said he’s never seen in his more than 36 years of practice.
Hardy said he plans to attend the children’s funeral Saturday in D’Iberville.
“I think it says a lot about the father that he is burying the children with their mother,” he said.
A visitation will be held at 10 a.m., with services to begin at 11 a.m. Saturday, May 30, at Sacred Heart Catholic Church, 10446 Lemoyne Blvd, D’Iberville.
Interment will follow in D’Iberville Memorial Park.
A reception will be held in the Sacred Heart school cafeteria following the services.
Bradford-O’Keefe Funeral Home, Howard Avenue in Biloxi, is handling the arrangements.
This story was originally published May 27, 2020 at 3:54 PM.
