A Long Beach, Calif. elementary school teacher was stabbed and killed while she was keeping watch of two-dozen students playing at a park during her class' "Fun Friday."
Police in the southern California city told the Associated Press that 53-year-old Kellye Taylor was monitoring students at a playground close to the Huntington Academy when a man came up behind her and attacked her at about 1:30 p.m. on Friday.
Authorities later identified the man as 50-year-old Steven Brown. He was the father of her grandchildren and lived in Long Beach. Sgt. Aaron Eaton told AP that investigators found the "sharp instrument" Brown allegedly used to stab Taylor in the neck. Most of the children who were playing nearby saw the teacher fall to the ground, blood streaming from her wound. Some of the children ran back to the school owned and operated by the Taylor family, and alerted other instructors that something had happened.
"How could they do something like this in front of these babies," Taylor's younger sister Pamela Huffman, who also works at the school, told the Long Beach Press-Telegram. "All I could do was run to her. I saw her slip away. I knew she wasn't going to make it."
Huffman told the Press-Telegram that Taylor had custody of the grandchildren, which Brown was not happy about. According to police, a potential motive has been assembled, but authorities are still unsure how close Brown and Taylor's daughter were.
"She loved children, and she loved being around children," another one of Taylor's sisters, Vanessa Kelly, told KABC-TV. "She loved teaching children, and that's what she did."
Almost 30 children currently attend The Huntington Academy, ranging in grade levels from kindergarten to sixth grade. The school has organized for a group of counselors to be at the ready when class is back in session on Monday.
"These babies are not going to want to go back to that park," Huffman said. "That was our park. Our park. Now what are we going to do?"
