Angels.

It was the word Lupe Cuevas used to describe three children — none more than 3 years old — found dead Saturday morning by their grandmother in a Reseda apartment complex.

Cuevas had left earlier for work Saturday morning from her home in the 8000 block of Reseda Boulevard. She saw a commotion but didn’t realize it involved the family she lived one story above in the multi-unit complex. She could look out of her apartment and see the family’s place.

When she got home, after one look at the police tape, the investigators, and the media, she knew something had gone terribly wrong.

The three children had been stabbed to death, and police converged on the complex in an all-day investigation that led to Tulare County, where their 30-year-old mother was taken into custody hours later, authorities said.

By afternoon, Cuevas could only stand in disbelieve, with frequent bouts of tears, as she watched what used to be a relatively peaceful sidewalk turn into a police command post.

“They were beautiful children. Beautiful ones. The little girl was just as sweet as sweet can be,” Cuevas said, noting that the oldest was a boy and the second oldest was a girl.

“When that little girl first saw my little dog, Rosie, she was so sweet. She wanted to pet him,” she said of the youngsters’ afternoon encounters outside with Cuevas’ chihuahua.

“She wasn’t shy. She was sweet.”

Cuevas said her roommate — friends with the grandmother — stunned Cuevas with the news that the grandmother’s daughter was a suspect.

“I said, what?!”

Cuevas said she couldn’t recall any concerns that might have tipped anyone off to the fate of the children, whose family had been living there at least since January.

“I’d never heard anything, nothing,” she said.

In fact, it was the regular blaring of cartoons – often after 10 p.m. — from the children’s apartment that gave her the opposite impression.

“There’s no rhyme or reason as to why they’re dead. It makes no sense.”

She occasionally saw the grandmother, who would often pass her by walking her own dogs in the alley behind the apartment.

“You know, we said hi a few times, and we’d be cordial but it was the little girl who stands out in my head because when I first saw that little girl she was like, ‘Oh, I want to pet her’ … and the grandmother said no … I would say, ‘Grandmother says no, but maybe next time,’ and she understood. Just a perfect little girl.”

“They weren’t brat little kids. They weren’t like that.”

For now, Cuevas and her neighbors face having to live in the apartment complex where the children were killed.

“It’s going to be really hard for me to be there,” she said. “I’m not going to want to go down those stairs, past their apartment. Where are those kids? Why aren’t the cartoons on?

“I’m going to be processing this for a long time,” she said: “An angel shouldn’t have to go that way.”

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