HOUSTON -- A licensed vocational nurse shot a young mother and kidnapped her newborn son outside a pediatrician's office near Houston after lying to her fiance about having delivered his child, authorities said.
"She needed to justify that she had a child to her fiance," Montgomery County Sheriff's Capt. Bruce Zenor said at a news briefing Wednesday.
Verna McClain, 30, of Houston is accused in Tuesday's fatal shooting of Kala Marie Golden, 28. Ms. McClain was charged with capital murder Wednesday, and a judge ordered her held without bond in Montgomery County jail.
Investigators said Ms. McClain took 3-day-old Keegan after she suffered a miscarriage but didn't tell her fiance. "She told him she was pregnant and had given birth to a child by him," Capt. Zenor said. Ms. McClain is black; Ms. Golden, white. The captain said the fiance is not white, and it was unclear how she intended to pass off the baby as her own.
Before the shooting, Capt. Zenor said, Ms. McClain had cased Northwoods Pediatric Center in Spring, Texas, about 25 miles north of Houston, a place she knew well, having taken her two children there for treatment.
Capt. Zenor said Ms. McClain didn't know the victim. "This was a random choice," he said.
Shortly after 2 p.m. Tuesday, Ms. Golden emerged from the doctor's office after taking her son for a checkup and buckled the child into her truck. She then got into a fight with a woman parked next to her, witnesses said.
The woman shot Ms. Golden several times before taking her son from the truck and fleeing, investigators said.
Based on witness accounts, investigators found the woman's blue car 11/2 miles away at an apartment complex. There, Ms. McClain eventually approached them, saying she was trying to help, but her story unraveled.
Ms. McClain confessed to the shooting and kidnapping, according to her arrest report.
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