California police seeking 3 children and their mother after father found shot dead

(Reuters) - Authorities were searching on Monday for three children allegedly abducted by their mother from a home where their father was found shot dead in the San Francisco area, California officials and media reported.

Three children - ages 3, 6, and 12 - were abducted from San Pablo on Sunday at 11:30 p.m. local time, according to a child-abduction alert message issued for California on Monday which named 35-year-old Alicia Ortez as a suspect.

Media reported that Ortez is the mother of the children and that their father had been found shot dead in the yard of a home in San Pablo, a city of some 30,000 residents near San Francisco, on Monday morning.

Ortez, described as a transient, was not suspected in the homicide, the San Francisco Chronicle quoted police as saying.

(Reporting by Eric M. Johnson in Seattle; Editing by Catherine Evans)

[Crime scene image via Shutterstock]