Five-year-old twins were found dead in Florida afer their mother jumped off a bridge into Lake Jesup to her death.
A motorist saw a car pulled on the shoulder of the State Road 417 bridge and a woman sliding out of the passenger side window at about 8:45 a.m. before jumping into the water, Seminole County Sheriff Dennis M. Lemma told WKMG.
Deputies spotted the woman, who has been identified as 31-year-old Catorreia Hutto, floating in the water and enlisted two fishermen — one of whom as an off=duty firefighter — to recover the body.
Lemma said the discovery prompted a wellness check at a home in Sanford, where officers found the two children, a boy and a girl, dead in their bunk beds. The medical examiner will determine the cause of death.
Lemma said that a gun was found in the bedroom, but the children did not appear to have been shot, nor did they have any signs of blunt-force trauma.
“If (the deputies) did not check the vital signs, they would not know that they had been deceased,” Lemma said. “So (the cause of death for each child is) unknown.”
WESH identified the twins as Ahmad and Ava Jackson.
Lemma said that both children were special needs but that there had been no signs of troule, including calls to the home, a Habitat for Humanity project completed about a year ago.
The sheriff said there was little food or furniture in the home, but investigators so far don’t know if Hutto, who worked at a temp agency, was struggling financially, according to WKMG. She had been at work a few days earlier, he said.
The twins last attended school on October 13.
Lemma said Hutto apparently tried Thursday night to call her mother, who lives in Perry, Florida, but was in Orlando for a medical procedure. The mother told officials she missed the call and had assumed it was one of the children playing with phone since no one left a message.
Lemma said the children’s father lives in south Florida.
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[Featured image: Cotorreia Hutto, Ahmad and Ava Jackson 3 years ago/Facebook]
