Spokane native, daughters slain

Family and friends will gather this morning to remember a Spokane native and her teenage daughters who were shot to death 12 days ago in Southern California.

Naomi Grangroth, 34, and 15-year-old twins Nikita and Narissa Williams, along with Grangroth’s boyfriend, Jeff Blixt, and his 17-year-old son were killed Nov. 11 in Temecula, Calif., in what authorities are calling a murder-suicide. According to news reports, detectives think the boy, Matthew Blixt, shot the four others to death at his father’s home, then turned the gun on himself.

Last Sunday, Grangroth and her daughters were remembered at a ceremony in California attended by hundreds of the girls’ classmates, Grangroth’s co-workers and fellow church members.

Today, the mother and daughters will be remembered at a funeral in Spokane, where they will be buried side by side.

“Naomi was always of the mind nothing was ever as bad it seems,” said her sister Brianna Ybarra, of Spokane. “We are trying to take the best points of her and apply them to our own lives. We take comfort in knowing they are all together (in heaven).”

Grangroth, a Rogers High School graduate, was the oldest sibling in her family. She had five sisters, a stepsister and a stepbrother.

“She was the person who we looked up to for advice,” Ybarra said. “She was always the type of person who stood on her own two feet. She did everything on her own, but she’d help anyone.”

Grangroth had the girls when she was 19. “I remember when Naomi told me she was pregnant with the twins. She said, ‘I can’t do it,’ ” recalled her mother, Sharon Garcia, of Spokane. But Garcia assured her daughter she’d do fine.

“The twins were my first two grandchildren,” Garcia said. “They were my angels.” And their mom “protected her daughters like they were rare jewels,” she added.

At age 20, Grangroth enlisted in the Army. She wanted to secure a future for her daughters, said her sister Sara Grangroth, of Spokane. And military is in the family’s blood, with several members having served in the Air Force.

Naomi Grangroth was a heavy-duty equipment mechanic in the Army – a role her mom jokes about now. “When she was a little girl, she didn’t like to play in the garden because she didn’t like to get dirt under her nails,” Garcia said. “Then she became a mechanic. And I said dirt is a lot easier than grease to get out from under your fingernails.”

After boot camp, Grangroth was stationed in Germany. She enjoyed her four years in the Army, Garcia said. “She believed in her country, and she was very proud of it.”

The family was impressed with how rugged Grangroth was for choosing to be a mechanic.

But more than that, they admired her as a mother.

Since Nikita and Narissa were 3, they lived with their mom. Grangroth separated from the twins’ father, Scott Williams, of Bothell, Wash.

“They called themselves the Three Musketeers,” Garcia said. “To see them together, they weren’t like mother and daughters, they were like triplets.”

The threesome did tae kwon do and motocross together. They did each other’s hair.

“They liked to put their mom’s hair in pigtails,” Ybarra said.

The mother and daughters liked to camp, and they attended church together.

“They lived life to the fullest every day,” Garcia said.

Nikita and Narissa’s aunts delighted in talking to and seeing the giggly teens, who they described as happy and energetic.

“Last time I saw them, I was in awe of the young women they had become,” Sara Grangroth said. “I was so excited to watch them grow and impatient to see who they would become. Nikita had a gentle, easygoing essence and would have blessed any child as a mother. Narissa was a little more rough around the edges, but just as sweet, and would have done anything for anyone.”

The twins both loved to sing, Ybarra said. They had beautiful voices.

“They came here for one Christmas, and we had a karaoke machine,” Ybarra said. “And you couldn’t tell if it was the artist or them, they were so good. And they were only 9 years old then.”

On a Web site, PathConnect.com, the twins had each posted a profile listing a few of their favorite things: singing, dancing, motocross – and their heroes. On that short list was their mom.

The relationship between Grangroth and her daughters was one that inspires her sisters.

“I strive to be as good a mother as her and hope one day that my daughter will look at me the way Kita and Rissa looked at her,” Sara Grangroth said.

In California, Naomi Grangroth was a project manager for a construction company and recently conveyed that she “felt her life was finally where she had always wanted it to be,” Sara Grangroth said. “She had found a man she was truly happy with, and I believe he was the one for her. The girls adored him and the feeling was mutual. She loved her family. She loved her job. She loved life.”