How could she afford the computer and the phone?

Rachelle Grimmer shot her two children and killed herself in a standoff at a welfare office in Laredo. The two children later died, too. The implications from the newspaper stories are that she was distraught because she had been denied food stamps.

Obviously, the woman had some mental problems. She had no job. The newspaper report says that she was nowhere near the Webb County per capita income of $13,600. Neighbors say she would walk down the highway after midnight to beg restaurants for the food they would throw away. The family bathed with a hose outside the small trailer they lived in -- a step up from the tent they had occupied previously. Yet she had a cell phone and probably a computer -- previous news reports detail the webpage she and her children set up, and the daughter posted on Facebook the day she was shot. How did they afford those things? And when child welfare investigated her in July 2010, she showed them money and food.

It appears Grimmer did little to help herself. The children did not go to school. When she applied for food stamps, she never submitted the proof of income the agency required. She reported that her child support was greater than her monthly expenses for rent and utilities. The agency had no choice but to turn her down. According to the children's paternal grandmother, their father had tried several times since his divorce to have the children removed from Grimmer's custody. Grimmer's friends say that's not true. At any rate, perhaps he didn't try hard enough.

"Friends saw family's desperation." The Dallas Morning News; 12/11/2011; p. 3A.