Esbeidi Sanchez of Bascom, Florida killed her two young sons before turning the gun on herself, five days after her baptism on Oct. 6. No one suspected that anything like that would happen, including her husband and her pastor.
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The 25-year-old Sanchez shot her two sons, 7-year-old Ronaldinio “Ronny” Ramiez-Sanzhez and 5-year-old Gustavo “Angel” Ramirez-Sanchez the day after they came home from school, reports the Tallahassee Democrat. She then used the gun on herself.
When her husband, Thomas Sanchez got home, Ronny and Sanchez were dead, but Angel was still breathing. He was rushed to a hospital in Tallahassee, where he died the next day.
The deaths left the tiny community of Bascom, which has less than 125 residents, stunned.
“Everybody’s flabbergasted,” Brother John Smith, pastor of First Baptist Church in nearby Malone, told the Democrat. “She was a very beautiful lady and seemed like she had a real sweet personality. She didn’t indicate that anything was wrong whatsoever.”
Cpt. Scott Edwards of the Jackson County Sheriff’s Office told the Democrat Sanchez did leave a note, in which she wrote about her planned suicide and the struggles she faced. But her motive for killing her own children remains a mystery.
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“Basically it was describing some incidents that occurred in her past that probably led up to this,” Edwards said. “It mentions the kids, but it doesn’t mention why she would do that to the kids. It’s probably one of the things we’ll never know.”
The Democrat reports Sanchez had no criminal record, although she had personal struggles. In 2005, she was granted a protection order against her father, who was charged with sexual battery. Those charges were dismissed, but in 2011, just before her second son was born, she filed a domestic violence injunction against him. She claimed her father “likes violence” and “threatened my boyfriend and maybe me and my son.” The injunction was denied.
The community grew to know Sanchez through church. She attended Sunday services and youth programs during the week at First Baptist Church. On Oct. 1, she was baptized.
“Mama was very involved in the school,” Bryant Hardy, the assistant principal of Malone School, where Sanchez’s sons went, told the Democrat. “We loved their whole family. Two very sweet kids, always smiling. Every time I walked by them, they always had a hand stuck up in the air to give me high five. Everything was good to them. They were just good kids.”
The funeral for Ronny and Angel was held on Saturday in Malone.
