According to prosecutors, Thomas confessed to an acquaintance that she had killed her children and needed to move.
Advertisement
The attorney for Sheborah Thomas says she in a catatonic, nearly incoherent, state and has to undergo a mental health evaluation before making her first appearance in court.
But a few weeks ago, Thomas told her bosses the workload was too much.
Authorities say Thomas first called her 5-year-old daughter into the bathroom and held her head under the surface until she died. Once the girl was in the tub, the mother said she grabbed the girl by the head and forced her underwater, holding her there until she stopped moving, according to the news site. Smith cried. She said the children’s father is incarcerated and did not yet know what had happened.
According to court documents, Thomas had been arrested for theft once in 2009 and twice in 2010.
Court filings from July 2016 also suggest Jermaine Anderson, the father of Thomas’ 12-year-old child, began to express concerns she had started using drugs again.
Wesley says he threatened to call the police when Thomas became irate and she eventually left, without the money that she wasn’t due to receive until Monday. Autopsies have been ordered.
It was reported that Sheborah after drowning her children, Orayln and Kahana tried burying them at her backyard but when it was proving hard, she hid their bodies under a neighbor’s home instead. She then placed their bodies in a trashcan, moving them the next day to a spot underneath a neighbor’s house – after she returned from The Little Cajun Kitchen. The unidentified man reportedly told the police he asked her where her children were, and she told him she had killed them.
“She was so matter-of-fact about it, he didn’t think she was serious. He thought she was joking”, Smith said. Then she went home to pack and move.
The shocked neighbor drove Shenborah to the nearest police precinct after realizing she repeatedly confirmed killing two of her three children.
Investigators don’t yet know whether the mother has a history of mental problems, Smith said.
The victims were found under a neighbor’s home, police said.
In 2012, Child Protective Services had placed the two children with their maternal grandmother after the girl, then 2 years old, was found wandering the streets with an intoxicated homeless man. In an interview with the station, Wesley said Sheborah Thomas was trying to pick up a check for $47. Smith said, adding that she had taken care of the children for their mother in the past.
Officials said caseworkers will be conducting an independent and comprehensive review of how CPS handled any prior allegations involving the Thomas family.
Advertisement
Dozens of people gathered for a candlelight vigil Tuesday night in the Third Ward as everyone here tries to make sense of a horrific crime. That was after investigators say she had done the unthinkable: drowning her son Oralynn, 7, and daughter Kayana, 5, in a bathtub. She was charged with failure to identify and giving false information in 2011, according to police records.
