Texas police filed charges against mother of an infant who died after sustaining serious burn injuries. Authorities assume the child’s mother was behind the incident and gave a grisly confession to her alleged actions.
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Hooks Police Department recently obtained an arrest warrant for 21-year-old Jatoria Renae Cleamons in connection to the February incident. Hooks police say with the help of the Bowie County Sheriff’s Office, they responded to a call for medical assistance at a home at 100 Kennedy Circle, per KSLA 12 News. Cleamons was there with her 8-month-old, Courtlyn, staying with a relative, the report says. Authorities say when they arrived, they saw paramedics performing CPR on the baby boy. However, their efforts were to no avail and he was pronounced dead at the scene.
The investigation into his death led police to back track to events that occurred two weeks prior to the incident. First, Bowie Judge Jay Womack ordered the child to be sent for an autopsy at Southwest Institute of Forensics. They found the infant died of thermal injuries and ruled his death as a homicide, KSLA’s report says.
A lengthy homicide investigation eventually led them back to the child’s own mother, who gave the police a frightening confession, the report says. Cleamons allegedly admitted to giving her son a bath in scalding hot water while she lived in her home in Texarkana. She said she was upset with him because he soiled his diaper. Two weeks after the bath is when Courtlyn succumbed to his injuries.
The woman took to Facebook sharing grieving messages about the incident.
“I love you so much and I miss you so much my heart is so broken. I will always think about you. Rest in Heaven my love," she wrote in one post, per Law & Crime .
After Cleamons was questioned by police, she was not arrested. The report says Hooks police didn’t obtain a warrant for her arrest until June 13. It’s unclear why Cleamons wasn’t taken into custody at the time of questioning or why it took so long to file the warrant.
As of this weekend, Cleamons is still at large, facing charges of injury to a child and manslaughter. Hooks police ask the public for their help in locating her.
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