Remains of infants discovered at Texas mobile home park

By Calvin Palmer

Authorities in north Texas are investigating the skeletal remains of two infants found in a mobile home park yesterday.

The bones were found in a garbage bag left by a tenant who had moved out of a mobile home on the park between Mansfield and Burleson, about 20 miles south of Fort Worth.

Tarrant County Medical Examiner’s Office and forensic investigators are studying the remains.

Terry Grisham, sheriff’s spokesman, said it remains unknown how the infants died.

“Right now we can’t confirm if they were live births, stillborns, or born and killed. We just really don’t have any idea,” Grisham said.

The remains of one infant were in a box inside a trash bag. The other remains were in a plastic container. Both boxes were under the porch.

“You couldn’t see them unless you got down on your knees,” Grisham said.

Investigators have identified the sister and brother who had lived in the mobile home. The woman is being interviewed by detectives.

[Based on reports by the Fort Worth Star-Telegram and Associated Press.]

Jury hands out death sentence for birthday party killings

By Calvin Palmer

A jury in Texas today sentenced to death a 21-year-old man for killing a five-year-old girl and her grandmother during a family birthday party in Fort Worth.

Erick Davila was convicted on February 19 of shooting 48-year-old Annette Stevenson and her granddaughter, Queshawn Stevenson, on April 6, 2008.

The Tarrant County jury deliberated roughly seven hours before deciding that Erick Davila posed a continuing threat because of his violent criminal acts.

Jury members also decided that there were no mitigating factors that warranted giving him life in prison instead. With those answers, State District Judge Sharen Wilson was required to impose the death penalty.

Prosecutors Tiffany Burks and Bob Gill cited a string of violent crimes that Davila committed last year to convince jurors that he poses a continuing threat to society.

They said that Davila has been charged in the April 3 killing of Darrel Ford and the April 4 armed robbery of Joe Jimenez in the days before the April 6 shooting that killed Queshawn and Annette Stevenson and injured four other relatives during a party at their Stop Six town house.

Although Davila has not been convicted in the first two cases, prosecutors were allowed to present evidence about them during the punishment phase of his trial.

That seems a bit naughty but I guess when you are going down in Texas, you are going down!

Also, while in the Tarrant County Jail awaiting trial, Davila and two other inmates attacked and injured two jailers and two maintenance men during an escape attempt.

Defense attorneys Robert Ford and Joetta Keene put forward mitigating factors for Davila’s crimes.

His mother was unable to bond with him. Davila  was conceived during a rape when she was 13. Given that and his low IQ, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and home in a poor, crime-ridden neighborhood, it was not surprising that he joined a gang and committed crimes, Keene said.

Did the defense attorneys forget about his puppy running away when he was a child and then his goldfish dying?

[Based on reports by the Fort Worth Star-Telegram and Associated Press.]