Dallas police arrested Kariasa Thomas on Friday, August 2 and charged her with reckless injury to a child because three-year-old Kanyce Giddings drowned in a swimming pool at an apartment complex while Thomas was babysitting.
Thomas was babysitting Giddings and three other children at the time. She took the four children she was babysitting, her daughter, and her legally blind husband to the pool at the apartment complex where she lives. Thomas told police that she let Giddings stand on the steps that go into the pool because the little girl did not know how to swim.
Thomas was only a few feet away from Giddings. However, she used her cell phone to check Facebook and played with her dog for approximately 15 minutes while the children played in the water.
She did not check on the children during that time.
Thomas did not notice that Giddings was missing until a security guard told her that the pool was closed. She borrowed the guard’s flashlight and quickly found Giddings’ body. The security guard, an off-duty police officer, performed CPR while someone else called 911.
Giddings died at Methodist Charlton Medical Center on June 22.
Reckless injury to a child is a felony in Texas.
"That was just the investigative process. We never want to rush anything," Sgt. Warren Mitchell told the Daily News. "We want to look into every case as thoroughly as we can."
Detective Corey Foreman of the Dallas Police Department says that she may be charged with something more serious at a later time, local news station WFAA reports.