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ANGELA K. BROWN
Associated Press Writer
HALTOM CITY, Texas — After she and her two younger sisters were pulled out of a burning house, a scorched 7-year-old screamed, "Why mommy? Why mommy? Why did you do this to me?" said a neighbor who helped the girls.
As rescuers tended to the girls — ages 7, 5 and 3 — their mother, Alysha Green, told a fire investigator that she doused them with gasoline and set them on fire, neighbor Kevin Lopez said Monday, two days after the fire.
"She was crying and saying `I'm sorry' and she didn't know why she did it," Lopez told The Associated Press.
The girls' father arrived a short time later, saying his wife must not have taken her medication and that he could not believe what had happened, Lopez said.
Adam Green, the father, could not be reached for comment Monday.
The girls remained in the burn unit of a Dallas hospital Monday, but their conditions were not released. Alysha Green, 29, who also remained hospitalized, was arrested on three counts of injury to a child/serious bodily injury, police said.
If convicted of the first-degree felony, Green could face up to life in prison.
Police would not confirm neighbors' accounts of the events or fire officials' earlier statements that Green put her daughters in a closet, poured gasoline on them and herself and set them on fire.
"It's part of an ongoing investigation, and we're not going to discuss specific details of what occurred," police Sgt. Terry Stayer said.
After hearing commotion on Saturday just before noon, Lopez looked toward the Greens' house a few doors down and saw the two girls and their mother in the yard, screaming.
As another neighbor sprayed the kids with a water hose, Lopez grabbed some wet towels and ran to the house, which he wrapped around the 7-year-old. Her youngest sister's hair and body were so badly burned that Lopez thought she was a little boy.
"I couldn't recognize them," Lopez said of the children.
In May, Child Protective Services investigated a complaint that the youngsters had witnessed domestic violence between the parents, but that claim could not be substantiated, said agency spokeswoman Marissa Gonzales.
Police in Haltom City, a Fort Worth suburb, had not been called to the Greens' house for criminal matters, but city officials had cited them for code violations, Stayer said.
On Monday, a row of balloons, teddy bears, flowers and candles lay in the front yard of the wood and tan brick house. Someone placed a sign that read, "Get well soon; we are praying for you" by a front window. A doll house, small purple plastic car, pink scooter and pink bicycle were by the front porch.
On a boarded side window, soot was visible on the window sill and a faint odor of smoke was in the air.
"It's sad," Lopez said. "I've never seen anything like that before."
The alleged arson would be yet another high-profile case in which a Texas mother turned against her children.
In August in Flower Mound, Andrea Roberts shot her husband and 11- and 7-year-old children to death before killing herself. In May, Gilberta Estrada hanged herself and her four children in their Hudson Oaks mobile home. Only the 8-month-old survived.
Andrea Yates drowned her five children in the family's Houston bathtub in 2001. In 2003, Deanna Laney beat her two young sons to death and injured a third with stones in East Texas, and Lisa Ann Diaz drowned her two daughters in a Plano bathtub. Dena Schlosser fatally severed her 10-month-old daughter's arms with a kitchen knife in 2004.
All four of those women were found innocent by reason of insanity. Yates initially was convicted of capital murder, but that verdict was overturned on appeal.
http://ap.lubbockonline.com/pstories/20070917/200345837.shtml
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