By PEGGY O'HARE
HOUSTON CHRONICLE
Feb. 18, 2010, 11:00PM

A Houston mother was charged Thursday with capital murder in the death last year of her 14-month-old daughter, who died from blunt force trauma to the head, Harris County prosecutors said.

Jessica Lara, 24, remains in the Harris County Jail, where she is being held without bail. Her other two young daughters remain in foster care since they were also found to have multiple fractures after their sister, Karla Ortiz, died in April 2009.

Karla suffered her fatal injuries on April 11, 2009, at the family's trailer home in the 5400 block of Nordling near Tidwell in northeast Houston, said Child Protective Services spokeswoman Estella Olguin. Lara was alone with her children at the time, court records show.

Lara told authorities she found the toddler unresponsive, so she took her to a neighbor, who called 911. The child's father was at work at the time, Olguin said.

Karla was taken by ambulance to Texas Children's Hospital, where she could not breathe on her own and had dilated eyes. Doctors found she had suffered a blow to the back of her head with “high impact” and “high velocity,” which caused multiple subdural hemorrhages and bleeding in her brain, court records show.

Doctors tried to reduce the swelling in the girl's brain by removing a portion of her skull, but she died three days later, records show.

Investigators also learned at the time of the girl's death that Lara's other two daughters — then 2 years old and 3 months old — each had numerous old fractures, Olguin said.

The 3-month-old baby had a skull fracture, a fracture to her upper arm, a leg fracture and three rib fractures, court records show. “We're talking about an infant that is not mobile,” Olguin said.

The 2-year-old had suffered a wrist fracture, doctors found.

Lara could not provide any reasonable explanation for how the children's injuries happened, Olguin said. But the children's father told police he had seen Lara strike the two youngest girls, court papers show.

Lara also told the children's father that she had bitten the 2-year-old girl after a bite mark showed up on the child's face, records show.

On the day of Karla's head injury, Lara told police she and the children were in bed when the little girl became unresponsive, started shaking and became “weak,” court records show. Lara told doctors the baby began having seizures.

The children's father later told investigators he had concerns about the way Lara treated the children, but investigators said he continued to leave them in Lara's care and took no steps to report the mother's alleged actions, Olguin said.

CPS had investigated the family once before, prior to the baby's death, but that 2008 probe went unresolved because the family moved and their new address was unknown, Olguin said.

The Chronicle's Brian Rogers contributed to this report.

peggy.ohare@chron.com

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Emphasis added by H4K Editor