Tacoma-area man says he killed daughter, 2

TACOMA — A Tacoma-area man called 911 and said he had killed his 2-year-old daughter and was going to kill himself, authorities said Wednesday.

Pierce County deputies rushed to the Woodland Park apartments around 11 a.m. and found the girl dead and the 26-year-old man semiconscious with a binding around his neck, said sheriff’s spokesman Ed Troyer.

The girl’s mother arrived around 2 p.m. and screamed, “That’s my daughter!” as she collapsed to the ground while a chaplain held her, the Tacoma News Tribune reported.

Deputies revived the man and arrested him, Troyer said.

The girl may have been strangled or suffocated, although the cause of death remains to be determined by the medical examiner’s office. There were no apparent signs of trauma, Troyer said.

No one else was at home at the time. The mother apparently was at work.

The Tacoma News Tribune reported that deputies had been called to the couple’s apartment last month after the man reportedly threatened to kill his wife of four years after finding social media messages he did not like. He tried to hang himself after that incident, prompting a day of involuntary commitment.