HOUSTON – "Lord we know the power of the Gospel,” prayed members of the Houston Ministers Against Crime as they stood on the front porch of a horrific crime scene Tuesday afternoon.
They were at the home on Tierwester in the Third Ward where Sheborah Thomas is accused of drowning her two children and then dumping them under a neighbor’s home.
The ministers called the news conference and said the neighborhood needed more help. Their specific request was for more mental health help. However, no one had any evidence that Thomas was mentally ill.
“This was about my niece and my nephew,” Kita Thomas-Smith said after learning of the news conference.
The victims' aunt said she and her family felt disrespected by the news conference as she worked to plan and pay for funerals for her niece and nephew. She said Thomas did not suffer from mental illness. She said Thomas and her brother were together for about seven years. She said the children’s father is in jail and their mother is accused of drowning both.
"It's devastating. It's heartbreaking. It's unexplainable. You know. We have questions why because you know our family always tried to reach out to her and help her," Smith said.
Child Protective Services confirms it had an open investigation involving the family, but the state refused to say why.
"For her to do something like this, I don't know, she was a loving, caring mother,” said the father of Thomas' oldest child, who asked that KPRC 2 not reveal his identity.
He shares a 12-year-old son with Thomas. He said she called him Thursday asking him to pick up her son. He said he saw no signs of trouble.
"If I felt like she was going to do something to the kids, I would have took them," he said.
Thomas-Smith has set up a GoFundMe account here. She said donations are also accepted at Brookside Funeral Home at 13747 Eastex Freeway in Houston.