Prosecutors seek murder charges in Northern California child abuse case

In half a century of practicing law, Shasta County Dist. Atty. Stephen Carlton said, he had never encountered a case more grim than the one involving the little boy and girl and the storage unit they were entombed in.

“It’s the worst case I think I’ve ever seen in 50 years of practicing law,” Carlton said. “It disturbed everybody that was at the autopsy -- the police officers, the head of detectives and also my deputy. They said they’ll never forget what they saw. It’s just unbelievable.”

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FOR THE RECORD

A previous version of this article said that Redding is in Monterey County. Redding is in Shasta County. Also, an earlier version said the children were found in a storage locker; it was a storage unit.

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Authorities responding to a tip last week went to Tami Joy Huntsman’s apartment in the Plumas County town of Quincy in Northern California, where they said they found a starving 9-year-old girl. They arrested Huntsman, 39, and her 17-year-old boyfriend, Gonzalo Curiel.

Huntsman would not cooperate when pressed for answers about where her niece’s younger brother and sister could be found. But Curiel eventually directed investigators to a storage unit in Redding, about 130 miles away in Shasta County.

There they found the bodies of Delylah Tara, 3, and 6-year-old Shaun Tara.

Believing that the children died in Salinas, Monterey County prosecutors have filed murder charges against Huntsman and Curiel. Curie is being charged as an adult. They have not entered pleas.

An autopsy revealed the siblings died from “ongoing physical abuse,” Salinas police said in a news release. The children probably died around Thanksgiving, Carlton said.

Investigators in multiple counties are still working the case, but so far they’ve determined that in the past few weeks, Huntsman and Curiel bounced around Northern California and stayed in Redding, Shingletown and Quincy after driving up from Salinas.

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As recently as August, social workers in Monterey County had visited the couple’s apartment in Salinas where Huntsman was caring for five children: Delylah, Shaun and their 9-year-old sister, and twins that the Sacramento Bee reported were Huntsman’s biological children.

Social workers had visited the home four times between September 2014 and August of this year for general negligence investigations, said Elliot Robinson, head of Monterey County’s Department of Social Services.

Though no children were taken from the home during those investigations, that wasn’t the case last week in Quincy, when a concerned resident called police about possible abuse.

Plumas County Sheriff’s deputies arrived and found the 9-year-old girl starved, with broken bones and untreated injuries, officials said. The girl was rushed to a hospital where she is recovering. Huntsman’s two children were put in foster care, and she and Curiel were arrested on suspicion of abuse and torture.

It was only after speaking with Huntsman’s family that authorities learned that Shaun and Delylah were missing from the home, the Plumas News reported.

For breaking California news, follow @JosephSerna.

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