A Tarrant County grand jury will be asked to decide what charges should be filed against an Arlington mother who left her 17-month-old son to die in a hot SUV last month, the Tarrant County District Attorney's office said Tuesday.

Keashia Dyon Matthews of Arlington Matthews currently faces a second-degree felony charge of abandoning a child causing imminent danger, according to the district attorney's office.

Upgraded charges could include a murder charge, officials said.

A murder conviction could send Matthews to prison for life, while punishment on an abandonment charge ranges from two to 20 years.

Prosecutor Kimberly D’Avignon of the Tarrant County crimes against children unit declined to comment on the pending case or the possibility of a more serious charge, however.

“We’ll present all of the facts of the case to the grand jury and they choose to upgrade them if they feel they have probable cause,” D’Avingnon said Tuesday.

Arlington police arrested Matthews on a charge of injury to a child, according to an arrest warrant affidavit.

The Tarrant County medical examiner’s office ruled Darrell Singleton III's death on Sept. 3 was a homicide as the result of him being "left unattended in a motor vehicle during warm weather."

His body temperature was 107 degree when he arrived at an Arlington hospital on a day that reached 96 degrees.

Matthews remains free on a $13,000 bail, according to Arlington police.

Matthews could not be reached for comment on Tuesday, but an examination of Tarrant County records indicates she has had several contacts with child protection officials about her five children.

An affidavit filed in Tarrant County juvenile court shows that in 2003 an unnamed person reported to Texas CPS officials that Matthews might have untreated mental illness.

The allegations were made after her now 6-year-old daughter was born at Baylor Medical Center in Irving, according to the affidavit.

The document states that on the day Matthews gave birth to that child, she had driven five hours from her home in Arkansas to Irving to have the child delivered.

Matthews may have been “running” from something in Arkansas, the affidavit states.

Texas CPS officials took custody of that daughter after the report was made and they had received confirmation from Michigan authorities that Matthews’ older daughters, now 14 and 12, had been removed from her in 1996 because of neglect, said Marissa Gonzales, a CPS spokeswoman.

“All we knew at that point was that the oldest children had been removed from the home,” Gonzales said. “Based on that, we removed the child.”

CPS officials said the girl was returned to Matthews' custody several months later.

Matthews had another daughter in 2004, now 5 years old, but CPS officials don't know where she was born, Gonzales said.

For the past six years, Matthews split time between Texas and Arkansas, officials said.

In the 1996 Michigan case, Matthews was accused of leaving her 16-month-old daughter home unsupervised, severely malnourished, and drugged with sleeping pills, according to the affidavit.

Two years later, Matthews had a second child and said she hated the child and did not want to have anything to do with her, according to statements made to CPS officials. She also stated that on many occasions that she does not like children, according to the affidavit.

CPS investigators currently are reviewing those cases, Gonzales said.

In March, CPS officials said they began investigating Matthews for possible abuse. Someone had reported that she hit one of her younger daughters with a shoe, officials said. About a month later CPS investigated the family after the 6-year-old daughter told authorities that Matthews had left her three children at home without supervision.

She was allowed to keep them after agreeing to put them in day care while she was at work.

“She was told that it was not acceptable to leave them at home alone, but was allowed to keep her children after she verified that the children had day care,” Gonzales said. “That’s another case that’s being reviewed.”

NATHANIEL JONES, 817-390-7635

http://www.star-telegram.com/local/story/1666463.html

Emphasis added by H4K Editor