A 9-year-old boy and his father were found dead in their Marina apartment Wednesday evening in what police are investigating as a murder-suicide.
The San Francisco medical examiner’s office on Friday identified the son as Pierce O’Loughlin and the father as 49-year-old Stephen O’Loughlin.
The tragedy was preceded by a bitter custody battle between the boy’s parents, a dispute animated largely by a conflict over Pierce’s vaccinations, family court records show. A trial over the matter was scheduled for Tuesday — the day before the killings took place — but court records state the proceedings were delayed until March.
Lorie Nachlis, an attorney for Pierce's mom, Lesley Hu, rejected any suggestion that O'Loughlin killed his son because his mother wanted the child vaccinated.
“I think it is undeniable that Pierce’s father suffered from untreated mental illness, which resulted in his taking the life of his son and his own life," Nachlis said in a statement. “I believe that he did this horrid act in order to exercise the ultimate control over Lesley.”
The victims were discovered just after 6 p.m. Wednesday, after officers performed a well-being check at the apartment on the 3800 block of Scott Street. The weapon used was a gun, police records state.
Two people familiar with the investigation said it was the boy’s mother who asked police to check on the apartment, after hearing that Pierce hadn’t shown up for school that day at Convent & Stuart Hall.
Sarah Leffert, chief advancement officer for the Catholic private school, said the community was “devastated by these events” and praying for the family.
Hu filed for sole legal custody of the boy in July, nearly four years after the couple divorced in November 2016.
The parents had shared custody over Pierce’s medical decisions since the divorce, meaning that both had to approve “vaccinations of any kind,” court records show.
But Hu asked a court for sole control over Pierce’s vaccination decisions, citing what she described as O’Loughlin’s increasingly troubling adherence to the “anti-vaxx” movement — the scientifically baseless notion that vaccines cause autism or other illnesses.
O’Loughlin had refused to allow Pierce to receive vaccinations since he was very young, Hu wrote in court documents, arguing that the decision jeopardized Pierce’s health and potentially his enrollment in school.
“(O’Loughlin’s) stance on vaccinations has taken on a cult-like tone,” Hu wrote in a Sept. 14 court filing.
O’Loughlin had become so preoccupied with the child’s health that he was prone to videotape Pierce’s breathing, multiple times a day, “to document a stuffy nose,” Hu claimed.
Hu suggested O’Loughlin’s views stemmed from his involvement in a group called “Access Consciousness.” From 2012 to 2016, she said, O’Loughlin spent thousands of dollars on sessions with the organization, and “became convinced that the government was out to get us and was trying to mind-control us,” Hu wrote.
“His reaction to vaccinations reminds me of that difficult time.”
In his own court filings, O’Loughlin argued that his aversion to Pierce’s vaccinations was rooted in concern for his son’s health. Pierce, O’Loughlin said, was “vaccine-injured” and had suffered serious side effects like vomiting and drastic weight loss when he was vaccinated as a young child.
“This is not an ‘anti-vax’ parent seeking to prevent his child from being vaccinated,” O’Loughlin’s attorneys wrote in a Jan. 5 court filing. “For the average child, the risk-to-benefit ratio for vaccines is in favor of vaccinations. For a certain subset of society, however, that is not the case. Pierce is one of those people.”
Hu denied that Pierce had ever been diagnosed by his physicians as vaccine-injured, and stressed that Hu’s current doctors had highly recommended that Pierce be brought up to date with his vaccinations and flu shot.
Attorneys who represented O’Loughlin at various stages of the divorce and custody proceedings did not respond to requests for comment.
Nachlis said that on Tuesday O’Loughlin agreed to begin vaccinations.
“I’ve been doing this work for 40 years and I did not see this coming," Nachlis said. “In fact, I never would have predicted such a horrible event. I have had cases that have caused me to fear that a parent might do the unthinkable, but this was not one of them.”
Megan Cassidy is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: megan.cassidy@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @meganrcassidy
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S.F. murder-suicide: Tragedy preceded by bitter dispute centered on son’s vaccinations - San Francisco Chronicle
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