Woman Kills Self, Daughters

Friday, December 22nd 2000, 12:00 am

By: News On 6

LOS ANGELES (AP) â€” The woman who threw her two young daughters off a courthouse ledge before jumping to her own death had financial troubles and had grown increasingly despondent, family members said.

Still, they said they had no reason to believe 27-year-old LaShanda Crozier was capable of such a tragedy.

``I still don't believe it,'' her husband, Davon Lewis Richardson, said Thursday, tears spilling from his eyes. ``She didn't want her children to live in a world and go through what she went through. ... She didn't have to leave and do me like this.''

Witnesses told authorities they saw the woman toss daughters Breanna, 7, and Joan, 5, off a ninth-floor ledge of the Los Angeles County Court building Wednesday afternoon.

Crozier jumped as a sheriff's deputy was trying to talk her down.

Crozier and Richardson had been in court earlier in the day to settle a dispute with her landlord over unpaid back rent, agreeing to gradually pay off the $925 debt.

Crozier and her family left the courtroom in the afternoon, but Crozier returned about 5 p.m. with the girls.

Word of the tragedy stunned Crozier's neighbors.

``The first thing I thought when I heard about it was, why?'' said Yanita Escobar, 18, a college student who lives just a few doors from Crozier's first-floor apartment.

Another neighbor, Noemi Reyes, said the woman was frequently seen playing outside with her daughters.

``I don't know what came over her,'' she said.

Crozier's landlord, Raul Almendariz, said the woman seemed embarrassed about her financial straits and wanted the opportunity to catch up on rent. He said the couple told him that Crozier had been hospitalized for a miscarriage and the illness cost her a hotel cleaning job.

``I wish I could have talked to her a little bit more, told her, you know, things are going to be OK, that people have their ups and downs,'' Almendariz told the Los Angeles Times. ``Somebody should have known how depressed she was.''

In recent years, she had occasionally sent her daughters to live with an aunt, Marietta Snowden.

``She was sometimes unstable,'' Snowden said. Snowden had been trying to gain custody of the girls because she was concerned about living conditions at the apartment and Crozier's mental state.

Snowden said Breanna sensed there was something wrong: ``She said, 'Auntie, I love my mama, but I don't want to stay with her.'''