Mom arrested after her baby, toddler found dead, strapped into their car seats

Show Caption Hide Caption Brittany Velasquez's court appearance Brittany Velasquez has her initial appearance at Pinal County Superior Court in Florence on March 27, 2018.

SUPERIOR, Ariz. — The mother of two children has been arrested after the bodies of a 2-year-old boy and 10-month-old girl were found strapped in their car seats, officials said Tuesday.

Brittany Velasquez, 20, of Superior, Ariz., was arrested Monday night and booked into the Pinal County jail on suspicion of two counts of murder. Evidence at the scene, outside a residence in the historic mining town of Superior about 60 miles east of Phoenix, indicated foul play, according to the Pinal County Sheriff's Office.

"This kind of thing doesn’t happen here," Christian Ensley, Superior's interim police chief said at a press conference Tuesday. "It’s a devastating blow. You can go anywhere around here and find people who know that family. It’s not hard to do."

Autopsies will be conducted on the children, whose names were not released, to determine their causes of death, the sheriff's office said. The vehicle in which the children died has been impounded as evidence.

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Some relatives of the children were inside the home when authorities went to crime scene at around 11:15 p.m. MST Monday night, sheriff's spokeswoman Navideh Forghani said. She declined to discuss the evidence discovered or a motive for the killings.

Officers had been called to the Velasquez home seven or eight times in recent years, Ensley said. One of the more recent calls resulted in a report to the Arizona Department of Child Services.

A family member called 911 at 10 p.m. Jan. 1 alleging that Velasquez had stolen a fur coat from her worth $3,500, Superior Police Department records show.

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As an officer investigated the alleged theft, the woman also complained that Velasquez often left the house for days at a time without taking her children, the report said. The family member said she was having difficulties taking care of the children in Velasquez's absence.

An officer called Child Services but a state official on the line told the officer she "would not be able to investigate this issue until (redacted) states that she no longer willing to take care of the 2 children," according to the January police report.

No one answered the door Tuesday at the run-down, one-story brick house in the community of about 3,000 people.

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Broken wooden furniture, cardboard boxes and a rusted barbeque grill littered the dried up grass in the front yard. Two pickup trucks and a car with its hood up sat at the end of dirt driveway.

Residents of the community, established in the 1800s to support a copper mine, include retirees and former mine workers. The nearby mine is closed now but a mining company is trying to reopen it.

Contributing: The Associated Press. Follow The Alden Woods on Twitter: @ac_woods