22nd March, 2011
Jessica Rene Tata, the Nigerian day care owner who escaped from America has been jailed.
She was escorted into the Harris County Jail yesterday in handcuffs after she was re-arrested.
The 22-year-old Houston woman arrived about 1:15 a.m. in a convoy of Harris County sheriff’s patrol cars and unmarked sport utility vehicles.
Tata, who was wearing a body armor vest, said nothing as she was taken into the jail in the middle of a crowd of investigators with the Gulf Coast Violent Offenders and Fugitive Task Force.
Christina Garza, a sheriff’s office spokeswoman, said Tata will be kept in a single person cell while at the jail.
“That’s for her safety,” Garza said. “The safety of any high-profile inmate is always of concern to us.”
About 35 minutes earlier Tuesday, Tata arrived at Hooks Airport, according to news accounts. She returned to U.S. soil shortly after 5 a.m. Monday when law enforcement authorities brought her to Atlanta, Ga., landing at the Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport on a flight from Lagos International Airport in Lagos, Nigeria, according to the U.S. Marshals Service.
Tata is wanted on 14 charges — four charges of manslaughter, six charges of reckless injury to a child, three charges of abandoning a child under 15, and a federal charge of unlawful flight to avoid prosecution – in connection with the Feb. 24 blaze at Jackie’s Child Care in west Houston.
While in Atlanta, Tata, a U.S. citizen born in Harris County who has relatives in Nigeria, waived extradition to Texas during a hearing Monday morning before a magistrate judge, Fulton County Sheriff’s Department officials said.
She is accused of leaving seven children unattended and oil cooking on the stove at a home-based day care at 2810 Crest Park while she shopped at a Target. She fled before being charged in the case. The three children who survived the fire were seriously injured.
The U.S. Marshals Service reported Tata was “captured” Saturday in Port Harcourt, Nigeria by Interpol and U.S Department of State Diplomatic Security agents. But the wanted woman’s brother, Ron Tata, 26, of Houston, said Jessica Tata surrendered to authorities Saturday.
The family’s relatives in Nigeria reported U.S. Consulate workers in Lagos traveled to Port Harcourt to take her into custody, Ron Tata said.
But a statement released Monday by the U.S. Marshals Service said two Interpol agents based in Lagos arrested Tata.
“Based on these leads, the IP-Lagos agents were able to locate Tata and take her into custody,” the U.S. Marshal’s Service news release said Monday.
Early Tuesday, Deputy U.S. Marshal Alfredo Perez, a spokesman for the agency’s Houston office, said Tata was captured. Officials at Interpol’s Nigeria office could not be reached Monday.
The day care fire on Feb. 24 killed 3-year-old Shomari Leon Dickerson, 19-month-old Elizabeth Kajoh, 20-month-old Kendyll Stradford and 16-month-old Elias Castillo.
The Houston Fire Department was summoned to the residence by a 911 call at 1:29 p.m. that day. Arson investigators determined the blaze was caused by a pan of oil that ignited after being left on a stove burner.
Surveillance video recovered from the Target store by investigators showed Tata was not at the house when the fire started, a federal criminal complaint shows. A witness at the fire told investigators that Tata said no other employee was at the day care, the complaint said.