Life and death from California hospitals; these times can be cruel and unfathomable; God help us

While a southern California Kaiser Permanente hospital delivered eight children from the same mother to massive news media celebration, another one in Los Angeles fired two technicians.

And the husband of the fired couple killed his wife and five children.

In this cruel form of human mathematics, the hospitals are one single life ahead after today.

The New York Times reports:

LOS ANGELES — A man shot and killed his wife and five young children before taking his own life Tuesday, apparently out of despair after the couple lost their jobs at a hospital, the police and city officials said.

Officers responding to 911 calls placed by the man, Ervin A. Lupoe, and by a television station to which Mr. Lupoe had sent a fax around 8:30 a.m., found seven bodies in a house in Wilmington, a working-class neighborhood near the Port of Los Angeles.

A police spokesman said the bodies were identified as Mr. Lupoe; his wife, Ana; their 8-year-old daughter and two sets of twins (5-year-old girls and 2-year-old boys).

Mr. Lupoe had telephoned and sent a fax to KABC-TV that indicated “he was despondent over a job situation and he saw no reasonable way out,” said Lt. John Romero, a police spokesman.

The two-page, typewritten letter made clear he was going to kill his family and himself. The station quickly called 911 to report the letter and then posted it on the station Web site after the bodies were discovered.

The letter said Mr. Lupoe and his wife had worked as medical technicians at a Kaiser Permanente hospital in West Los Angeles, but recently lost their jobs after a dispute with an administrator.

The administrator, it said, had asked them on an unspecified day why they had come to work, and then added, “You should have blown your brains out.”