Man convicted in Southern California slayings of his 4 children and their grandmother in 2021

LANCASTER, California — A jury has convicted a 32-year-old man of killing his four children and their grandmother in 2021 in Southern California.

Germarcus Lamar David was found guilty Tuesday of five counts of first-degree murder and three counts of assault on a child resulting in death, the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office said.

The murders took place on November 28, 2021, at the family’s home in Lancaster, a city in the high desert Antelope Valley north of Los Angeles. The neighborhood was already decorated for Christmas when the violence broke out, shocking neighbors.

The grandmother, 51-year-old Ericka England, babysat the children. Their mother returned home to find her family’s bodies and called 911.

A neighbor told The Associated Press in 2021 that a woman was running back and forth in their front yard that night, screaming, “My babies are gone! They’re all dead!”

The medical examiner identified the children as Namyiah David, 11; Germarcus David Jr., 7; KadenDavid, 2; and Noah David, 19 months.

David’s attorney, Deputy Public Defender Anna Brief, said Wednesday that she would not comment until after he is sentenced on April 24.

David was a security guard who had posted online about following a good and religious life. Within minutes of his wife arriving at the home, he turned himself in to Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies.

David had a permit to carry a gun, but it expired in August 2020 and was listed as canceled, according to records from the California Bureau of Security and Investigative Services, which oversees the private security industry.

England, the children’s grandmother, had been a state corrections officer since 1997 and was working at the state prison in Lancaster at the time she was killed, according to the union that represents corrections officers.