A Texas mother is now facing serious legal charges after her young children were discovered unresponsive in their backyard swimming pool, later testing positive for cocaine. The tragic incident has resulted in a significant criminal investigation.
Laura Nicholson was apprehended in Florida on May 11 and is charged with two counts of injury to a child linked to the deaths of her daughters. This information was confirmed by the Harris County Sheriff’s Office.
As of now, it remains unclear if Laura Nicholson has formally entered a plea regarding the charges.
The events unfolded in February when, according to a criminal complaint acquired by Oxygen, Laura was reportedly asleep on the couch. During this time, her daughters, aged 2 and 3, somehow ventured outside.
She was abruptly awakened by her mother, Catherine Nicholson, who was frantically shouting about the children being in the pool, as detailed in the complaint.
Catherine told Harris County deputies in the criminal complaint that she had left earlier that morning to run errands while her daughter slept and the girls played in the living room. But when she returned, she noticed the back door partially open and discovered her grandchildren in the water.
The children’s grandfather, David Nicholson, who had also been asleep upstairs, awoke to the commotion, according to the complaint, and helped administer CPR after Catherine and Laura pulled the children from the water. Meanwhile, several neighbors arrived and called 911.
An investigator then asked David if his daughter was fit to care for her children.
“He said as far as the children go, yes,” authorities wrote in the complaint. “He said she falls asleep a lot and this causes issues.”
Laura also made several startling admissions to investigators.
As investigators wrote in the complaint, she admitted that the door latch had been broken for the past two days and would not lock. She also said her children are “always getting out and running to the pool” and that child protective services had questioned her last year about “drug allegations.”
Autopsies for both children revealed they had cocaine and benzoylecgonine, a cocaine metabolite, in their blood, according to the complaint.
Although the results did not definitively determine whether the girls had drowned, a forensic pathologist stated that it could not be ruled out as a cause of death.
Oxygen could not locate an attorney for Laura.