CALABASAS - The 25-year-old son of a Canoga Park High School math teacher was arrested today on suspicion of killing his mother with a butcher knife inside their home, authorities said.
Jesse Winnick called his sister Tuesday night after police believe he stabbed his mother, Hadas Winnick, 55, several times in the chest, said Lt. Gil Carrillo of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department.
"He told her she shouldn't come home because he killed mom," he said.
His sister called police around 11 p.m Tuesday to report the slaying in the affluent, hillside community not far from Mulholland Highway. It was the first in Calabasas this year.
When sheriff's deputies arrived at the well-kept home she shared with her son in the 3800 block of Declaration Avenue, they found her bloodied body. But her son had fled in his mom's car.
"It looked like an ordinary home. There was nothing that stood out of any significance," Carrillo said.
Police found the vehicle abandoned just east of De Soto Avenue on Ventura Boulevard.
Jesse Winnick then jumped into a 2007 Range Rover driven by a man deputies declined to identify. Los Angeles police and sheriff's deputies pulled over the driver at Ventura and De Soto. They found Winnick cowering in the back.
It took 30 minutes to coax him from the car, but police say he was arrested without putting up a fight and booked at the Lost Hills Sheriff's Station on suspicion of murder.
Winnick, whose page on the social networking site Facebook.com says he is a personal trainer and pharmaceutical distributor, does not have a violent arrest record, police said.
His mother was a veteran math teacher who taught Algebra I to Canoga Park High School students.
Friends and colleagues at the school described her as a fiercely dedicated teacher who built her life around her freshman and sophomore students, even authoring "GRF XRSZ," a book to help students visualize math programs. She came to the school three years ago after a stint at Mulholland Middle School.
"She stayed late and worked hard," Principal Pam Hamashita said. "She was here on Saturdays - she was very dedicated to her career. ... People are in shock right now."
Hamashita led the shaken student body in a writing exercise this morning to share its feelings and memories of Winnick. Breana Wiles posted her poem, "A dedicated teacher passes on: in loving memory of Mrs. Winnick," on the school's Web site, canogaparkhs.org.
"Mrs. Winnick although some of us did not know you/ Hearing of your passing makes us all feel blue," she wrote. "I do not understand why how someone could do such a thing/ But we sometimes don't know what life can bring."
Neighbors on her docile, nicely-maintained street mirrored her sense of bewilderment. As homicide investigators and uniformed deputies cleared the crime scene, a white-and-blue coroner's van pulled away.
"This was such a violent way to die for someone who didn't deserve this," said a neighbor, who asked to remain anonymous. "She will be missed, especially by the kids at school. They were her life."
http://www.dailynews.com/ci_7003561