Parents who went missing days before Christmas found dead in car
A couple who disappeared five days before Christmas and left their three children worried have been discovered dead inside a car.
Johnny and Melissa Soto, aged 52 and 45, respectively, vanished from their home in San Diego, California, on the evening of December 20, according to their adult children.
On the day after Christmas, US Customs and Border Patrol officers contacted the San Diego Police Department to report a vehicle linked to the missing persons case from the San Ysidro district.
Inside the vehicle located in the Golden Acorn Casino parking lot were a man and a woman, both lifeless, the police department said on Wednesday.
‘When the male and female were found by officers, the male was deceased from what is believed to be a self-inflicted single gunshot wound to the head,’ stated the police department.
A preliminary investigation suggested that the man killed himself. The woman’s injuries were not immediately known and will be determined by the county medical examiner’s office.
‘Her death is being investigated as a homicide with her husband as the
lone suspect in what appears to be a tragic case of domestic violence,’ the police department stated.
The married couple had been living separately, and a domestic violence incident was believed to have happened before they were reported missing.
Family members said their parents had been together for more than two decades but that they separated in July.
Their youngest son, Vincent, said he was the last member of the family to see their parents leave on Wednesday night of last week.
‘It felt like a normal night. He was just sitting here watching TV like he always does,’ Vincent told NBC San Diego.
‘And my parents, they always talk. He asked me, “Hey, Vinny, can you leave for a minute? We’re going to talk.” So I left the house, not assuming anything.’
The couple’s vehicle was found at 1800 Golden Acorn Way in Campo, which is less than 10 miles from the US’s border with Mexico.
Anyone with information on the incident is urged to contact the police department’s homicide unit.
‘We all had high hopes that they would at least come back for Christmas,’ the couple’s eldest daughter, Alexia Soto, 23, told the news outlet.
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