Arizona Student Killed in Love Triangle Involving Math Teacher
  • CHANDLER, Ariz. — An 18-year-old high school student caught with his 48-year-old math teacher in her bedroom was stabbed to death by her boyfriend, who was himself a former student of hers, police said Tuesday.

    Chandler police said 20-year-old Sixto Balbuena told them he never meant to kill Samuel Valdivia. He allegedly told police "the blade went in like going into butter" and that he just wanted to show Valdivia how much he hurt him by sleeping with Tamara Hofmann.

    Balbuena, a Navy sailor on leave from California, was arrested on a charge of second-degree murder after police found him covered in blood and told them about the killing. He remained jailed in lieu of $100,000 bond on Tuesday and did not yet have a lawyer.

    Balbuena found his girlfriend naked and Valdivia in his boxer shorts in the woman's bedroom around 2:40 a.m. Friday, according to police reports and court documents.

    Balbuena told police that Valdivia apologized to him before Balbuena began kicking, punching and throwing things at him, according to a police probable cause statement.

    Police said Balbuena told them he "wanted to teach the victim a lesson," and stabbed him in the lower side with a kitchen knife, according to the court document. Valdivia later died at a hospital.




Sunday School Teacher Charged With Cantu Murder, Rape
  • STOCKTON, Calif. — A woman kidnapped, raped and murdered an 8-year-old girl and stuffed her body in a suitcase that was dumped in a pond just a few miles from home, prosecutors alleged Tuesday.

    Melissa Huckaby, 28, was charged with murdering her daughter's playmate, Sandra Cantu, in a gruesome crime that has shocked and terrified residents of Tracy, a Northern California city of about 78,000, 60 miles east of San Francisco.

    Huckaby, who volunteered as a Sunday school teacher at her grandfather's Clover Road Baptist Church in Tracy, appeared in a San Joaquin County courtroom for her arraignment in a red jumpsuit and shackles. She trembled and cried as a judge read the charge: one count of murder with the special circumstances of rape with a foreign object, lewd or lascivious conduct with a child under 14