“Hello, my dad just stabbed my mom,” she tells the 911 operator, crying.
“He what?” the dispatcher asks.
“He just stabbed my mom,” she sobs into the receiver.
“With what?”
“A sword.”
The screams of her three siblings can be heard in the background. They all had just watched as Jesus Humberto Canales plunged the weapon into his girlfriend early Saturday morning in their two-bedroom apartment.
At one point, a child’s voice screams, “Daddy!”
Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies on Monday released a recording of the gut-wrenching 911 call in a public appeal for help in finding Canales, 29.
After killing Lucy Preciado - the 26-year-old mother of three of his children who spent her days at home watching them - he jumped in his 2002 bronze GMC minivan and took off, authorities said.
He remained on the loose Monday, and deputies believe he might still be using the van and could be in the Pomona area.
“We need to get a desperate man off the street. We need to get him off right now,” Sheriff Lee Baca said during an afternoon news conference. “This type of crime in front of children, where children are participants in trying to rescue their mother as she becomes mortally slain, is really beyond the pale when it comes to someone quite frankly in a deranged state.”
For most of three-minute recording, the girl goes from a chilling calm, describing her father wearing a muscle shirt and black shorts, to the little girl she is.
“I wanna go to grandma’s house,” she says at one point.
She also puts the operator on hold to check what direction her father fled in, saying, “He went right on L (Avenue).”
But she also sounds desperate as her mother slips away.
“Please, just hurry up,” she cries. “I don’t want my mom to die.”
Investigators said Canales, a carwash attendant, didn’t appear to have a history of domestic violence. They released few other details about the crime.
On Monday, flowers in vases, candles and a white wooden cross adorned with necklaces stood in front of the vacant apartment in the 4100 block of West Avenue L.
“She was the nicest person you could meet. She would always laugh and smile,” said neighbor Angelica Flores, 18. “She cared so much about her kids. She always put her kids first.”
Investigators said the couple had been fighting off and on for days.
“He loved his kids and loved her. It’s shocking that he would do such a thing,” said Karisma Figueroa, 9, who said she is best friends with one of Preciado’s children.
Neighbors said the children’s ages are 9, 7, 2 and 6 months. The oldest is Preciado’s daughter from a prior relationship. The three younger children, all boys, are those of Preciado and Canales.
In the last seconds of the calls, the 9-year-old makes one final plea.
“Just please hurry,” she implores. “I am scared.”
