SAN DIEGO — Last year, a man drove a truck into their Bay Park home and killed his estranged wife by setting her on fire. Now, the couple’s children have filed a wrongful death lawsuit against their father in an attempt to gain ownership of the family home.
Monica Coates, 61, was killed by her husband on Dec. 29, 2025 less than a month after she’d filed for a restraining order against him. Stephen Coates, now 63, was suffering from mental health issues and thought Mrs. Coates was conspiring against him to kill him.
In Mrs. Coates’ request for a restraining order filed in San Diego Superior Court last year, she wrote that in the weeks leading up to November, her husband had come to believe she was “conspiring with others to kill him and his paranoia has made him erratic and makes me fear for my safety because he perceives me as someone he needs to protect himself from.”…