A Texas woman has been arrested in Florida, charged in connection with the deaths of her two toddler daughters in February.
The two girls, 3 and 2, apparently drowned in a backyard pool, but investigators later found that both had cocaine in their systems, KDFW reported.
The girls’ grandmother told authorities she came home, where they lived with their mother and grandparents, from running errands and found the children in the pool. She said she also found the back door open.
The mother, 23-year-old Laura Nicholson, told investigators she had fallen asleep on the couch and awoke to the grandmother’s screams. Nicholson said the latch on the back door had been broken for two days the children were constantly leaving the house and running to the pool.
Court records show that autopsies found cocaine in the blood of both children, but the reports were inconclusive about whether they drowned.
After the February 11 deaths of the children, Harris County detectives began their investigation into the circumstances, which ultimately led to charges of reckless injury to a child, KHOU reports. Nicholson was arrested on Monday near Fort Myers, Florida.
“We get a tip and a call that a lady from Texas was here,” said Lee County Sheriff Carmine Marceno.
“Our fugitive warrants unit go out there as we always do, and we hunt, we look, and we found our suspect at a mental health facility,” he said.
She is now awaiting extradition to Texas. It’s not clear if more charges — perhaps directly related to the children’s deaths — are forthcoming.
Featured image: Laura Nicholson/Lee County Sheriff’s Office
