DE QUEEN, Ark. (AP) – A mother who told police she smothered her twin boys and a young daughter was arrested Saturday after being hospitalized when she collapsed in front of officers sent to the home in response to a telephone report from the children’s father in New York.

Paula Eleazar Mendez, 43, was taken to the De Queen Regional Medical Center and treated for ingesting a toxic substance. Prosecutor Tom Cooper said he was told by an emergency room doctor that the mother had not ingested enough of the substance to kill herself.

Police did not release the names of the slain children, but said they were 6-year-old twin boys and an 8-year-old girl. However, neighbors said the twins were only 5.

The officers who went to the home found the bodies of the three children lying side by side in a queen-size bed in what appeared to be a master bedroom near the rear of the wood-frame house, said Chris Brackett, an investigator with the Sevier County sheriff’s office.

“Why the kids? It’s terrible and sad. I can’t think of anything worse,” said Brackett.

The officers went to the home after the Sevier County sheriff’s office was called at 9:39 a.m. by the children’s father, a construction worker who lives in Manhattan, according to De Queen Police Chief Richard McKinley. The father, whose name was not released by police, told a sheriff’s office dispatcher that his wife had called and told him that she had killed the youngsters, McKinley said.

When De Queen patrolman Chad Bradshaw and Sevier County Deputy Sheriff David Stinson went to the house, Mendez answered the door and then, as she spoke with the officers, collapsed in front of them. They summoned an ambulance and she was taken to the De Queen hospital.

Mendez was under guard at the hospital until she can transferred to the Sevier County Jail to face homicide charges, McKinley said.

“Mrs. Mendez, although in the hospital, is under arrest at this time,” the prosecutor said. “I do not believe there is any dispute as to who killed these three children, and therefore who will be charged. However, we have not determined at this time the particular homicide charge or punishment we will be seeking.”

Notes found inside the house may disclose a motive for killing the children, McKinley said, but he didn’t specify the contents of the notes.

The family had moved here from New York to live in a safer environment, according to the Rev. Salvador Marquez-Munoz, pastor of Saint Barbara Catholic Church, where the children were enrolled in catechism classes.

“They were active in the church. She never missed a Sunday,” Marquez-Munoz said. “They were just like any other children – bright and lively. I can’t believe she could have done this.”

The youngsters’ bodies were sent to the state police Crime Lab at Little Rock for autopsies to determine if they had been given any poison or had been smothered as their mother told police. The children’s faces were not covered when police found their bodies, Cooper said.

AP-ES-01-28-06 2237EST

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