A Houston-area woman who allegedly shot her four children, two fatally, has been charged with murder and was being held Monday on $14 million bail, authorities said.
Oninda Romelus, 31, was charged Saturday with two counts of murder and two counts of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, the Brazoria County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement.
Deputies responded at 4:48 a.m. Saturday to a 911 call about a shooting involving multiple children in Angleton, Texas, about 45 miles south of Houston. The caller, who turned out to be the children’s mother, summoned them to a gas station along a local highway in the 19,500-population city that serves as the county seat, Sheriff Bo Stallman told reporters, according to KHOU-TV.
Responders arrived to find a 13-year-old boy and a 3- or 4-year-old girl dead inside the vehicle, and an 8-year-old girl and 9-year-old boy critically wounded.
Deputies administered aid that probably “saved at least one child’s life,” the sheriff’s office said.
The surviving children were airlifted to a Houston hospital, where they were in stable condition Saturday, sheriff’s office spokesperson Madison Polston said.
Authorities were still investigating Monday but said the children were shot inside the vehicle elsewhere and then driven to the spot where Romelus called it in.
“This tragedy has shaken our community, and we are all feeling the loss,” Stallman told reporters. “It is impossible to make sense of a senseless tragedy like this, but we will do everything we can to seek justice for these children.”
With News Wire Services
