Mother arrested on murder charges in the Broward deaths of her girls, ages 9 and 7
Lauderhill police arrested a mother on first-degree murder charges Tuesday night, exactly three weeks after the bodies of her daughters were found in a canal behind a condominium complex.
Tinessa Hogan, 36, had been a person of interest since the day after 9-yearold Destiny Hogan and 7-year-old Daysha Hogan were found about eight hours apart on June 22 in the same canal near Northwest 59th Way and 21st Street. Police said detectives “encountered” Hogan along the canal while searching for evidence on June 22. She’s been hospitalized since then.
Online Florida Department of Health records say Hogan is a licensed certified nursing assistant whose address of record is the Opis Bridgeview Center in Ormond Beach.
Residents in the Habitat II Condominiums told the Miami Herald that Hogan carried a
Bible and, after a neighbor saw Hogan swimming in the canal, Hogan asked the neighbor if she wanted her kids baptized.
The neighbor chose to bring her kids inside, instead.
Lauderhill police say this is still an open investigation. Anyone who knows anything can call Lauderhill police at 954497-4700 or Broward Crime Stoppers at 954493-8477 (TIPS).
David J. Neal: 305-376-3559, @DavidJNeal
Police have arrested a South Miami-Dade woman who is accused of leaving a toddler strapped in with a seat belt inside a sweltering van for seven hours, killing the child.
Juana Perez-Domingo, 43, was booked into a jail early Saturday on a charge of aggravated manslaughter of a child.
According to the police report, Perez-Domingo had been hired to ferry children to daycare in the neighborhood. On Friday, she had been paid to take a 2-year-old girl to a daycare in Homestead. She picked the child up about 6:30 a.m. and took the child to her own home first, because the daycare had not opened yet.
Just before 8 a.m., she put the toddler, who has been identified as Joceyln Maritza Mendez, in the third row of her Toyota Sienna minivan — without a child’s seat — to take her the daycare. The child was strapped in with the seat belt. Perez-Domingo later admitted she “got distracted” and went back inside her home, never turning the van on, the report said.
Perez-Domingo went back to the van about 3 p.m. and found the child. But instead of calling 911, according to a police report by Miami-Dade Detective Jonathan Grossman, she called the child’s mother and “advised her that the victim had died.” Perez-Domingo then drove the lifeless child to the mother’s house.
The report said she had no driver’s license.