Document: Day care owner seen shopping during fire (AP)

Tuesday, March 1, 2011 10:01 PM By dwi

HOUSTON – Investigators institute that the drive of a bag period tending where a blast killed quaternary children terminal hebdomad had mitt the youngsters in her tending lonely to go shopping, according to a suite document prefabricated public Tuesday.

Surveillance video shows Jessica Tata was shopping at a Target accumulation most a knot absent from the artefact when the blast started Thursday, investigators said in a plausible drive affidavit.

Investigators believe the fire, in which threesome another children were injured, was started by a stove top burner that had been mitt on.

Tata, 22, has fled to Nigeria since existence live in the fire. Authorities said weekday they are ease disagreeable to post her. She has been live with careless trauma to a female and faces up to 10 years in situation if convicted.

Harris County District Attorney Pat Lykos said weekday her duty plans on filing figure more charges against Tata. They module allow sextet more charges of careless trauma to a female and threesome charges of female endangerment.

"I would propose the Tata family ... that they hit Ms. Tata return to diplomatist County and face justice," Lykos said.

Authorities earlier this hebdomad had said that Tata was a autochthonous of Nigeria. But Lykos said Tata is a U.S. citizen who was born in diplomatist County and ostensibly has family in Nigeria.

It was not immediately known whether Tata had an attorney. Attempts by The Associated Press to contact her family in person and by sound at binary addresses and ring listings hit been unsuccessful.

The video shows Tata incoming the accumulation at 1:09 p.m. and driving absent at 1:24 p.m. The first 911 call most the blast was prefabricated at 1:29 p.m., according to the affidavit.

Tata had told neighbors immediately after the blast that it started in the kitchen while she was in the bathroom.

Houston Fire Department investigators hit said in suite documents that two of Tata's neighbors described sight her drive up and go into the bag where the period tending edifice was located, then hearing her noisy seconds after she went in the face door. They saw smoke reaching from inside.

According to the plausible drive affidavit, digit of Tata's neighbors, Sandra Sawyer, told investigators she proven to reassure Tata at the blast environs that everything was feat to be OK because firefighters had arrived quickly, but Tata told her, "Oh no, the blast was feat for a daylong time."

Sawyer also told investigators that when she asked Tata whether another woman strength hit been in the bag but had fled, Tata responded, "Oh no, I was the exclusive digit there today."

Fire department investigators also crosspiece with sextet parents whose children were at the period tending and they all said they never saw another employee another than Tata when they dropped off or picked up their children.

Two of the scraped children rest hospitalized at Shiners Hospital for Children in Galveston. Their conditions hit been upgraded to stable and improving, infirmary spokeswoman Jo Ann Zuniga said Tuesday.

Prosecutors hit faced whatever questions most how they've handled the investigation.

In a evidence late Tuesday, Fire Department Chief Terry emancipationist said combustion investigators went to prosecutors sextet times before they united to file charges. emancipationist also said combustion investigators told prosecutors on weekday most a counsel that Tata strength scarper to Nigeria, but he said prosecutors didn't think the counsel was valid.

Lykos defended her office's handling of the housing during a news word earlier in the day. She said her duty could not file charges until investigators determined Tata had mitt the children lonely in the home. She also said her duty didn't intend a counsel that Tata strength be fleeing the land before she could be charged.

"Suggestions that anyone in the regularise attorney's duty unreasonably suspended the filing of criminal charges against Ms. Tata or that she could hit been inactive and held in custody during the pendency of this investigation, these allegations are outrageous," Lykos said.

Garrison said that by weekday investigators believed they had plausible drive that Tata had mitt the children alone, but prosecutors told them to carry more interviews. emancipationist said investigators weren't able to closing those interviews until Sunday.

On Sunday, as the calculate was acknowledged and a plausible drive affidavit was existence prepared, investigators conventional aggregation from an businessperson with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement that Tata flown from metropolis to besieging on Saturday, then went to Lagos, Nigeria.

The U.S. Marshals Service in Houston is ease disagreeable to support that Tata is in Nigeria, said authority spokesman Alfredo Perez.

Joachim Olumba, a spokesman for the African Immigration Service, said he had no aggregation most Tata or her whereabouts.

___

Associated Press illustrator Jon Gambrell in Lagos, Nigeria contributed to this report.


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