Friends and family members gather in the street to comfort one another outside the apartment building in the 3300 block of Audubon Court where a 3-year-old boy and his 4-year-old sister were found dead inside a second-floor apartment on Wednesday. (Photo by Michael DeMocker, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune)
A 23-year-old New Orleans woman told police she shot her 3-year-old son and drowned her 4-year-old daughter in their home in the 3300-block of Audubon Court on Wednesday, New Orleans police said. She was booked late Wednesday with two counts of first-degree murder.
Chelsea Thornton told police she killed her two children, then took a bus to a nearby hospital because she was suffering from stomach pains and a headache. The children's grandmother found the children dead in the bathtub of the family apartment just before 5:30 p.m., and called police. No one else was at the house when the grandmother arrived, police said.
Thornton confessed in a taped interview with investigators, police said. She was booked just before 11 p.m.
Family members were left bewildered as to what happened from the time the 23-year-old mother picked up her children from nursery school to about 5:30 p.m., when the children's paternal grandmother discovered their bodies in a bathtub in the Gert Town apartment.
Family members said they worried about the woman, and her care of the children. "I wish she would've opened up more to us," said Nicole Hammons, a cousin of the children's father. "As family members, we could've pushed harder. We were concerned for the kids. We obviously didn't know this would happen."
At some point Wednesday afternoon, the mother called the father, who does not live with her, and asked him to meet her at a hospital because she was not feeling well.
When the 29-year-old father arrived there, he asked where the children were. The mother said they were at day care, but he sent his mother with a key to the apartment to check on them anyway, Hammons said. The grandmother found the bodies of Chelsea Adams, 4, and Kendall Adams, 3, in the bathtub, Hammons said.
Police arrived at the scene about 5:30 p.m. Holding up large white sheets, detectives shielded coroner's investigators from view as they carried the children's bodies out of the apartment. "It's a terrible, terrible tragedy -- two young children," Police Superintendent Ronal Serpas said. "It's a very, very sad case."
Sobs gave way to screams as family members gathered outside the brick apartment complex at Audubon Court and Olive Street. Neighbors said the mother and her two children had moved in within the past week.
"She did not seem crazy to me," said Hammons, who works as a nurse, said of the mother. But, "all kinds of people tried to get those kids from her."
Another cousin of the father, Stella Adams, said the family had long been concerned about the welfare of the children. The father lives in Houston, working construction jobs. The parents have been dating off-and-on for about five years. The mother does not work.
After finding out two years ago that the mother was living with the kids in a house where there were drugs, Adams said, she allowed the family to move into one of her rental properties and did not charge them rent. "I even put them in a situation where I lost income to allow her to live in my house," Adams said. "She had the kids in an environment that wasn't good for kids."
The father's family tried to invite the children to as many family parties as possible, Adams said. "We wanted to show them what a happy environment is," she said.
Anthony Knighten, 24, said he passed by the house on his bike Monday and saw the mother playing with the children. "They were normal," he said. "You know, normal stuff when the child does something, the mom kind of spanked 'em. It wasn't nothing serious."
Shirley Schmidt, 37, said government leaders "need to be here to see this. They keep cutting mental hospitals, you're going to see a whole lot more of this."
This investigation is ongoing, police said. The lead investigator is Detective Tyra Pruitt. If anyone has any information about this crime, they're asked to call Detective Pruitt at 504.658.5267, or Crimestoppers at 504.822.1111.
Source: http://www.nola.com/crime/index.ssf/2012/10/new_orleans_mother_confesses_t.html
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