12-Year-Old Girl Describes Slayings of Mother, Sister

A 12-year-old North Hollywood girl wept as she described at a preliminary hearing Tuesday how her sister’s ex-boyfriend shot her mother and sister to death, then wounded himself before fleeing.

Tracey Maestro identified Luis Palacio as the man who shot her sister Kimberly Vandenberg, 25, and her mother, Elizabeth Vandenberg, 46, on Sept. 10 at the mother’s apartment in the 11100 block of Acama Street.

Police say that after the killings, Palacio shot himself in the chest. He was not critically wounded, however, and fled in his ex-girlfriend’s car.

San Fernando Municipal Judge Gregg Marcus ordered Palacio to stand trial on two counts of first-degree murder.

Maestro testified that on the afternoon of the killings she was working with her computer and that her sister, who lived in her own apartment in North Hollywood, was talking to her mother.

She said Palacio arrived about 5 p.m., furious because he blamed Elizabeth Vandenberg for his breakup with her daughter several weeks earlier. Palacio and Kimberly Vandenberg have a 3-year-old son, who was in the kitchen.

Maestro said Palacio shot her mother with a .38-caliber revolver and she slumped on the sofa, bleeding from her chest. Palacio aimed the gun at her sister, Maestro said, and Kimberly Vandenberg held a pillow in front of her face as if to protect herself.

Maestro said she ran into the kitchen to call 911 and heard another shot and footsteps, which police say were the sounds of her sister running to the bathroom.

Police said Kimberly Vandenberg tried to lock herself in the bathroom, but Palacio shot the lock off the door, kicked the door open and fatally shot her.

Maestro began to sob as she described testing an electrical shocking device that she hoped to use to stun Palacio, and Marcus called a brief recess so she could regain her composure. Upon resuming, Maestro said the device did not work because it had no batteries.

When she came out of the kitchen, Maestro said, she saw Palacio turn the gun on himself. “He shot himself in the side and he fell on the floor,” she said. “Then he got up and said ‘bye-bye.’ ”

Palacio was arrested about 7:30 p.m. in Hawthorne after a police officer saw Kimberly Vandenberg’s car and found Palacio in a phone booth nearby.

Palacio was treated for a serious chest wound before being jailed.