The Connecticut mom who cops believe strangled her three children before hanging herself ran an illegal daycare out of her house — and told parents she couldn’t watch their kids on the day of the murder-suicide, neighbors said.
Sonia Loja, 36, called the parents of roughly 10 kids to tell them not to drop their children off Wednesday — the day cops say she killed her own kids, 12-year-old Junior Panjon, 10-year-old Joselyn Panjon and 5-year-old Jonael Panjon. Loja then took her own life, police said.
“Yesterday morning, just before 10, a guy came to drop off his kid and she came to the door and said, ‘No, sorry, I can’t watch him today,’” Loja’s Danbury neighbor Elvis Espinal told The Post on Thursday.
“She explained that she’d called all the rest of them, all the rest of the parents of the kids she watches, and she couldn’t get ahold of one, to tell them not to come that day.”
Shortly after, Loja’s brother-in-law, who apparently lives in the house, left but “didn’t see anything weird,” said Espinal a 43-year-old limo driver.
“He just went to work and he said he didn’t even know anything was wrong until he got a call from his brother,” Espinal said.
Loja’s husband, who works in landscaping and had left early in the morning, called 911 to request a wellness check late in the day because he had been calling his wife and hadn’t heard from her, according to the neighbor.
“He called the cops and asked them to do a wellness check and then he came here and he beat the cops here so he went inside and like a couple minutes later he came out and he called 911 and just fainted to the ground,” he said.
Police later arrived and found Loja hanging in a shed in the backyard, not far from the playground-style equipment used by the children in the daycare, neighbors said.
Loja was cited twice for the illegal daycare center in June, the state Office of Early Childhood told The Post. She had been cited June 2 after an anonymous tip, but a followup visit four days later found children again at the home, according to the office.
She claimed they were relatives but the agency came back June 29 and found the illegal daycare still operating. A “Demand to Cease” was issued during that visit, spokesperson Maggie Adair said. A visit a day later found no children in Loja’s care, Adair said.
The children’s father, Pedro Panjon, shared a heartbreaking post on social media Wednesday night, showing a black ribbon with a Spanish phrase that translates to “Rest in peace, now you are in a better place with God.”
He also posted several heartbreaking photos showing Loja and the children in happier times. One showed the mother holding Jonael in her arms above a birthday cake with a lit No. 1 candle as the other children look on.
Espinal choked up as he recalled 5-year-old Jonael, “the nicest little guy,” who would wave as he rode his bicycle.
“I’ve had a knot in my stomach ever since I found out what happened,” he said. “I still have no appetite. I’m not in shock, it’s more than shock, it’s like horror or like devastation. I can’t stop seeing the little boy’s face.”
He never saw “anything strange” with the family, who seemed like normal people, Espinal said. New York Post.