TEXAS CITY, Texas (AP) — The father of one of three children found shot to death in Southeast Texas was charged Friday with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, police said, but has not been named a suspect in the killings.
Texas City Police Department said in a statement that 27-year-old Junaid Hashim Mehmood was arrested late Thursday, just hours after the slain children and their wounded mother were discovered by officers in an apartment in Texas City. The mother, 24-year-old Kimaria Nelson, had been shot in the head.
Mehmood had earlier been identified as a person of interest in the shootings, but he was arrested on an unrelated warrant. Police provided no information on the incident that led to the assault charge.
Police have not identified Mehmood as a suspect in the killings but said more charges would come Friday. He was being held without bond.
Police officers responding to a request for a welfare check at an apartment in Texas City Thursday evening discovered the bodies of 1-month-old Ashanti Mehmood, Prince Larry Brown, who would have turned 2 later this month, and 5-year-old Angela Pilot. Nelson was alive but unable to speak, police said.
Mehmood is Ashanti’s biological father and lived with the family at the apartment where the children were killed, police said. Texas City is about 50 miles southeast of Houston.
Nelson was taken the University of Texas Medical Branch in nearby Galveston. Police said she was in stable condition Thursday evening. A hospital spokesman said Friday he had no information for a patient by her name.