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Police have confirmed that the woman who told them about the bodies of two children at a hotel in Santa Ana is their mother, who then tried and failed to kill herself.
Santa Ana police Cpl. Anthony Bertagna told CBS 2 that the 42-year-old woman crashed her car on Harbor Boulevard in Costa Mesa, six miles from the hotel, in an apparent suicide attempt. Her identity and that of her children have not yet been released.
"Apparently she had a propane tank inside her car, she drove her vehicle at a high rate of speed," said Bertagna. She attempted to crash into an electrical box, but hit the concrete pylons instead. She refused to get out of the vehicle and attempted to choke herself with "some kind of device around her neck."
Costa Mesa police then smashed the car window and extricated the woman from the car.
She then told police about the bodies of the two children in the third-floor room at the Hampton Inn & Suites in the 2700 block of Hotel Terrace.
The woman was driving a car with Georgia license plates and a decal from a Georgia car dealership on the trunk. CBs reports that she is from Phoenix, but according to the LA Times, her last known address was in Scottsdale, Arizona.
The woman, who was treated and released from Hoag Hospital in Newport Beach, has been booked on suspicion of murder.
UPDATE, 10:45 A.M.: Police have identified the woman as Marilyn Edge of Scottsdale, Arizona, KTLA reports. Her two children were 13 and 10. It's still not known how they were killed.
Edge has been booked on two counts of murder. She attempted to kill herself by driving her car (which had a tank of propane in it) into an electricity box, then to strangle herself with an electrical cord, police say.
