Mother’s mental evaluation ordered
Baltimore woman accused of killing her children in apartment
“Mommy, no!”
That’s what Jameria Hall’s neighbors said they heard the night of Aug. 19, five days before
the bodies of her children Da’Neria, 6, and Davin Thomas, 8, were found inside their Southwest Baltimore apartment.
Charging documents describe a gruesome crime scene, discovered by a maintenance man asked to look into a foul smell coming from the apartment.
Davin was found in a sleeping bag, with a knife still stuck in his chest and a black trash bag over his head. Da’Neria was found in the bathtub.
Police said Wednesday that Hall, 28, confessed to killing the children when she was interviewed
by detectives. She is charged with two counts of first-degree murder.
District Court Judge Kent J. Boles ordered Hall held without bond at brief hearing Thursday afternoon and scheduled a bail review for Sept.
9, after Hall’s public defender asked to have a competency evaluation for her client.
Family members, meanwhile, are grieving the two young children who should have been getting ready for a new school year, and questioning why they remained in the care of their mother.
Theodore Thomas, the children’s paternal grandfather, said Thursday that he and his wife cared for the children at some point after Hall was charged in
2018 with arson and child endangerment after setting items, including family photos, on fire in her own mother’s home.
In a brief interview, Thomas said a child welfare agency took the children from him and his wife and returned them to Hall.
“They gave my grandchildren back to their mother after she lit the house on fire with them inside,” he said. “They took those kids. Why would they do that?”
Hall, who dismantled all the smoke detectors before setting the fire with her children in the home, pleaded guilty to first degree arson
“We will not forgive. We will not forget. We will hunt you down and make you pay,” Biden said.
U.S. officials said 11 Marines and one Navy medic were among those who died. Another service member died hours later. McKenzie said another 18 service members were wounded. More than 140 Afghans were wounded, an Afghan official said.
One of the bombers struck people standing knee-deep in a wastewater canal under the sweltering sun, throwing bodies into the fetid water. Those who moments earlier had hoped to get on flights out could be seen carrying the wounded to ambulances in a daze, their own clothes darkened with blood.
Emergency, an Italian charity that operates hospitals in Afghanistan, said it had received at least 60 patients wounded in the airport attack, in addition to 10 who were dead when they arrived.
“Surgeons will be working into the night,” said Marco Puntin, the charity’s manager in Afghanistan. The wounded overflowed the triage zone into the physiotherapy area and more beds were being added, he said.
The Afghan official who confirmed the overall Afghan toll spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to brief the media.
Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said one explosion was near an airport entrance and another was a short distance away by a hotel. McKenzie said some failure at the airport allowed a suicide bomber to get so close to the gate.
He said the Taliban has been screening people outside the gates, though there was no indication that the Taliban deliberately allowed Thursday’s attacks to happen. He said the U.S. has asked Taliban commanders to tighten security around the airport’s perimeter.
Adam Khan was waiting nearby when he saw the first explosion outside what’s known as the Abbey gate. He said several people appeared to have been killed or wounded, including some who were maimed.
The second blast was at or near Baron Hotel, where many people, including Afghans, Britons and Americans, were told to gather in recent days before heading to the airport for evacuation. Additional explosions could be heard later, but Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said some blasts were carried out by U.S. forces to destroy their equipment.
Over the last week, the airport has been the scene of some of the most searing images of the chaotic end of America’s longest war and the Taliban’s takeover, as flight after flight took off carrying those who fear a return to the militants’ brutal rule. When the Taliban were last in power, they confined women largely to their home and widely imposed draconian restrictions.
Already, some countries have ended their evacuations and begun to withdraw their soldiers and diplomats, signaling the beginning of the end of one of history’s largest airlifts. The Taliban have insisted foreign troops must be out by America’s self-imposed deadline of Aug. 31 — and the evacuations must end then too.
In Washington, Biden spent much of the morning in the secure White House Situation Room where he was briefed on the explosions and conferred with his national security team and commanders on the ground in Kabul.
Shortly before the attack, the acting U.S. ambassador to Kabul, Ross Wilson, said the security threat at the Kabul airport overnight was “clearly regarded as credible, as imminent, as compelling.” But in an interview with ABC News, he would not give details.