About a dozen family members spent Thursday afternoon meeting with police investigators and praying near the pier. They described Harris as a devoted mother who used to work as a nurse's assistant at a retirement home in Oakland, but over the last year and a half fought an increasingly unsuccessful battle with mental illness.
"It's confusing. I just want to know why she did it," said Demarcus Harris, a cousin.
Lashuan Harris, the third oldest of seven siblings, had been living with her children in a Salvation Army shelter in Oakland since early September, said her oldest sister, Telicia Harris, 26.
Before that, she lived with her mother in Oakland, with another sister in Jacksonville, Fla., and with the father of her children. She had been taking medication for her schizophrenia, but Telicia Harris said she did not know how consistently.
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