SAN DIEGO — Even for a couple known to their neighbors for fighting and drinking, the noises that night were chilling: The adults were yelling and cursing in Spanish and English and their twin infant daughters were crying uncontrollably.
Then came a frightening thud. Soon the babies' crying subsided into silence. The silence persisted for a week. No one notified police.
On Wednesday, responding to a report from a probation officer that Yolanda Vera Camacho had missed an appointment, police went to the tiny apartment.
There, they discovered the woman's lifeless body sprawled on the kitchen floor and the babies dead of apparent dehydration.
Now the police are trying to find the woman's live-in companion, the babies' father, Alfonso Penarant, a Mexican national who is thought to have fled to Tijuana.
Authorities believe the twins, almost 4 months old, died of neglect in the days after the mother died. "The babies, the babies," said neighbor Maria Martinez, her eyes welling with tears. "They were so small. All we can do now is pray that their souls find rest."
"Maybe if we had done something earlier, they might have been saved," said another neighbor, who declined to give her name.
The fact that no one called police troubled Councilman Juan Vargas, who represents the low-income Sherman Heights area where the couple lived.
"I walked the property today, trying to figure that out," Vargas said. "Neighbors just don't seem to care anymore about neighbors. We're trying to re-create a caring neighborhood in Sherman Heights and this is a serious setback. It's very disturbing."
But Catholic Msgr. Joe Carroll, who runs a program providing services to the poor and homeless near Sherman Heights, said reluctance to call police is not unusual for a neighborhood where some residents are illegal immigrants and others have criminal records.
"People in poor neighborhoods tend to be very private," Carroll said. "They don't want to get involved in other people's business and they're very gunshy of contacting the police."
The grisly sight in the apartment left both neighbors and veteran police officers shaken.
"I've been in investigations a lot of years, and I've never seen anything like this," said Capt. Ron Newman. "We've had children die but never just from neglect."
