4 children fatally suffocated

ELKHART, Ind. -- Four young children whose bodies were found in the basement of their home suffocated to death, and their mother remained hospitalized under sedation, police said Wednesday.\nDetectives were reviewing previous police calls to the home involving custody disputes between the woman and the father of the two oldest children but were not focusing yet on a particular suspect in the attack, police Capt. Steven Mock said.\nNo arrests were immediately made, but the deaths of the two girls and two boys were ruled homicides, and detectives had interviewed the father of the older children, he said.\nInvestigators did not know of any reports of violence during those police calls and were working to determine how many and how recent those calls were, Mock said.\n"We have not excluded any person or persons of interest in this case," he said.\nPolice identified the children as Jennifer Lopez, 8, Gonzalo Lopez, 6, Daniel Valdez, 4, and Jessica Valdez, 2. Their bodies and their unconscious mother, Angelica Alvarez, were discovered Tuesday night by Fernando Valdez, who police said was the father of the two youngest children.\nAutopsies Wednesday determined the children died of asphyxia, but Mock would not disclose how they were killed.\nAlvarez was being treated at Elkhart General Hospital, but Mock would not describe her injuries. He said investigators found no signs that she caused the children's deaths.\nAmbulances that had left the home Tuesday night in the city 15 miles east of South Bend were called back 45 minutes later after Alvarez was found to have a faint pulse, police Sgt. Bill Wargo said.\nFirefighters said tests for carbon monoxide came up negative.\nYellow police tape still was around the small, white house on a corner of a working-class neighborhood Wednesday as an officer investigated inside. A red minivan and white pickup truck were in the driveway, and two small bicycles with training wheels were near the back door.\nMartha Williams, who lives behind the family's home, said she first heard the report of the deaths on her police scanner. She had just seen the children playing in the leaves around their home.\n"They're sweet little kids, or they were," she said. "They didn't bother anyone."\nAt Woodland Elementary, where Jennifer and Gonzalo were students, classmates decorated their desks with drawings, poems, flowers and teddy bears, said Ellen Moore, a spokeswoman for the Elkhart Community Schools.\n"People who understand grief in children tell us it helps for them to have something to do to help deal with the powerlessness they feel when something like this happens," Moore said.