A welfare check at a home in the 6800 block of Old River Road near Ukiah turned into what investigators now say appears to be a double homicide and suicide: an adult man appears to have killed two children before taking his own life. Mendocino County Sheriff's Office Captain Quincy Cromer said the incident appeared to be a double homicide and suicide as detectives continued piecing together what happened at the rural property Saturday.
The emergency call came in at 9:53 a.m. Saturday as a request for a welfare check, a time Redheaded Blackbelt attributed to a dispatcher on radio traffic. That call escalated quickly: by 10:19 a.m., a second call for medical aid came in after someone reported finding injured children with blood on them and an adult man dead at the scene.
What followed was a desperate, improvised rescue attempt. Good Samaritans loaded the two injured children into a pickup truck and raced toward a hospital in Ukiah, meeting first responders at 2240 Old River Road — in front of the Mendocino County Office of Education. Medics performed CPR on the children for more than 30 minutes at that location before both were declared dead at 11:08 a.m., the outlet reported.
Office of Education Was Not a Crime Scene
The Mendocino County Office of Education facility at 2240 Old River Road served as the point where bystanders transporting the children in a private vehicle met incoming paramedics.
Mendocino County Sheriff Matt Kendall also moved to shut down another strand of public speculation that had spread as the story broke: rumors that the deaths involved a shooting. Kendall said investigators found no evidence a firearm was used, and explained that early radio reports referencing a gun likely stemmed from separate, concurrent law enforcement calls nearby or from confusion caused by plainclothes deputies working the scene, according to reporting cited in the dossier from theava.com.
First Responders Temporarily Taken Out of Service
The scale of the tragedy was severe enough that law enforcement dispatched chaplains to the location at 10:53 a.m. to support both family members and the first responders who had just worked on the children. Two ambulance crews that responded were temporarily taken out of service afterward.
The original report that broke the story Saturday morning was built on emergency radio traffic as the situation was still unfolding, and it reflected that uncertainty. That initial account from Redheaded Blackbelt described sheriff's captains, a lieutenant, and detectives responding to the scene, while Sheriff Kendall was traveling to the location, as authorities had not yet publicly confirmed the number of fatalities or identified any victims or suspects. Radio traffic at the time also referenced a protective sweep of a residence and the possibility that investigators were dealing with multiple crime scenes, before the sheriff's office later clarified the broader picture.
A Rural County Covering Vast Ground
The Mendocino County Sheriff's Office is responsible for patrolling 3,506 square miles of mountainous, isolated terrain, according to the Local Initiatives Support Corporation, a geographic reality that can complicate rapid response to violent incidents far from duty stations. The county's law-enforcement agencies also respond to domestic-violence-related calls for assistance.
The Old River Road deaths also follow another severe domestic violence case just over two weeks earlier, when Mendocino County Sheriff's deputies investigated a fatal stabbing along Hensley Creek Road north of Ukiah on September 22, in which a woman was killed and a male suspect was detained, as Hoodline previously reported.
The full circumstances surrounding the deaths on Old River Road, including a motive, remain under investigation by Mendocino County Sheriff's detectives. Authorities have not released further identifying details about the man or the two children involved.
