One day after a Texas nurse is accused of killing the mother of a 3-day-old baby and then kidnapping that little boy, there are a mountain of unanswered questions. Verna McClain’s mother was devastated when she learned her daughter had been charged with killing 28-year old Kala Goldenand abducting her 3-day-old baby boy. “I don’t know what’s going on. That’s not my kid,” said McClain’s mother who was sobbing when she talked with KHOU-TV. ”But I’m sorry for the family.” The distraught mother didn’t want her name used, but she said her daughter is a good person who has never been in trouble before. “Very nice, she’d give you the shirt off her back,” she said. “They said my kid did it, but I can’t wrap my head around it cause that’s my baby. But I grieve for the lady and her baby.”
Authorities said McClain killed Golden because she wanted a baby. Officials in Montgomery County say Verna McClain, 30, told her fiance’ she was pregnant with his child. They planned to marry in May, officials said at a Wednesday news conference. Authorities say after she had a miscarriage, McClain hatched a plot to steal another baby so her fiance’ wouldn’t know about the miscarriage. She allegedly killed Kala Golden and abducted her baby, Keegan, from outside a pediatrician’s office in The Woodlands area. Keegan was found unharmed hours later with McClain’s sister. McClain, 30, is a licensed vocational nurse who has three children. She is estranged from the children’s father, who lives in California. She works for a Harris County staffing agency that hires nurses. McClain grew up in California and moved to Houston in 2008.
Kala Golden’s family said she lived for her kids and died trying to defend her newborn son. “My daughter was brutally murdered protecting her baby,” said Linda Golden. Witnesses said Kala argued with the kidnapper and was shot several times, but still she tried to get her baby out of the attacker’s car. The driver ran over her while getting away, police said. The mother’s husband of three years said if the suspect, Verna McClain, did this allegedly because of a miscarriage, then Kala knew all about that kind of heartbreak. “My wife, herself, she’s had you know miscarriages, She didn’t run off and go [take] someone else’s baby, take someone’s life, you know,” said Keith Schuchardt.
Kala Golden had a son from a previous union, a toddler with Keith Schuchardt and then came their newborn baby boy. A family friend said Kala Golden was Keith Schuchardt’s rock. “He was a wild kid, but he’s really, I’m very proud of him. He’s done very well the last few years,” said Dean Burrell. “He’s holding up remarkably well. He knows he’s a dad, and he’s got to continue to be a dad and he’s basically all they have left.” Now Schuchardt is left planning his wife’s funeral. “I love you. I wish you were here to help me through this,” he said about this wife.
After McClain suffered a miscarriage, investigators said she decided to find another child and convince her fiancé it was his. “She needed to justify having a child to her [fiancé],” Capt. Bruce Zenor with the Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office said. “And she had led him to believe that she was pregnant and had a child, so she needed a child. She needed to produce a child.”
Deputies found McClain and her vehicle at an apartment complex off Sawmill Road, where she reportedly confessed to the crime and told them where the baby was. Texas Rangers found Baby Keegan unharmed around 8:15 p.m., with McClain’s sister at a home off FM 1960. Investigators said McClain presented Keegan to her family as a baby she intended to adopt. Apparently, McClain did not tell her fiance when she suffered a recent miscarriage, so she wanted to get a baby and present it to her fiance as his child, investigators said.
The crime left Houston-area residents stunned and looking for answers. Neighbors who live near the home where the child was found said they knew something was suspicious when Texas Rangers showed up Tuesday night. “I see a baby, and I was actually in the house on the Internet and had actually seen the Amber Alert about the kidnapping. And I see the baby, and the Texas Rangers put the baby in the back of the ambulance, and I sort of pieced it together,” Frank Johnson said. Johnson described the scene as surreal. “I’m thinking, this is crazy. I’m thinking, this doesn’t really happen every day in the city. I mean, you hear about a lot of shootings and other types of crime, but somebody kidnaps a baby, 3 days old, and the mother to be shot? I mean, that’s serious stuff – that’s really scary,” Johnson said.
Child abduction in America is rare, with just 263 cases recorded between 1983 and 2009. Cathy Nahirny of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) says perpetrators pretend to be pregnant and are willing to go to extreme lengths to stop their secrets being exposed, Nahirny says. “She is a woman who gets through life using lies and manipulation. Her relationship with her partner may be falling apart. She thinks that if she tells him she’s pregnant with his child he’ll stay. They want to hold on to their partner, they may not be able to conceive naturally and many of them will fake a pregnancy.” Unbelievably, some women manage to convince everyone they are pregnant for months. “It may be that the abductor has been faking a pregnancy for some time and has run out of options,” says Nahirny.
Three Secret Service Agents have been removed from the agency following a lurid prostitution scandal in Colombia. One supervisor was allowed to retire, a second supervisor was “removed for cause” and has 30 days to appeal, and a third is a Secret Service uniformed officer who resigned. The remaining 8 agents who were also allegedly involved in the scandal remain on administrative leave pending the outcome of the investigation.
The dismissals come as the scandal involving U.S. Secret Service agents in Cartagena, Colombia continues to expand. The scandal has entered the presidential contest, with GOP frontrunner Mitt Romney weighing in.
In other new developments:
A law enforcement source has told CBS News that the agents and military personnel met the women at “a few different locations, not just one.”The agents brought women back to the hotel individually at various times during the night, not all together, Milton reports. Each of 11 Secret Service agents allegedly involved in the incident was interviewed at Secret Service headquarters in Washington D.C. Monday and some were polygraphed, according to the source
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A law enforcements source tell CBS News Tuesday that reports Monday of 20 women involved that night are unconfirmed. Agents are still trying to confirm the number of women involved.
On Wednesday, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney said he would “clean house” at the agency in the wake of the incident, which had become a growing election-year embarrassment for the White House. “The right thing to do is to remove people who have violated the public trust and have put their play time and their personal interests ahead of the interests of the nation,” Romney said in a radio interview. Secret Service sex scandal source: 20 women visited hotel
Romney, however, said he remained confident in Secret Service director Mark Sullivan, echoing other statements of support for the agency chief from the White House and Capitol Hill. White House spokesman Jay Carney said Tuesday that Sullivan had “acted quickly in response to this incident and is overseeing an investigation as we speak into the matter.” Sullivan, facing questions on Capitol Hill about whether the escapades could have jeopardized the president’s security, said he had referred the matter to an independent government investigator.
The Secret Service has dispatched more investigators to Colombia to interview the women involved. Sullivan said the 11 Secret Service agents and 10 military personnel under investigation were telling different stories about who the women were, said Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee. King is among the lawmakers being briefed by Sullivan on the ongoing investigation. “Some are admitting (the women) were prostitutes, others are saying they’re not, they’re just women they met at the hotel bar,” King said in a telephone interview. Sullivan said none of the women, who had to surrender their IDs at the hotel, were minors. “But prostitutes or not, to be bringing a foreign national back into a secure zone is a problem.”
King said it appeared the agency actually had “really lucked out.” If the women were working for a terrorist organization or some other anti-American group, King said, they could have had access to information about the president’s whereabouts or security protocols while in the agents’ rooms. “This could have been disastrous,” King said. Obama has called for a rigorous investigation, and said he would be angry if the allegations proved to be true. Last Thursday, 11 Secret Service agents were recalled to the U.S. from Colombia and placed on administrative leave after a night of partying that allegedly ended with at least some bringing prostitutes back to their hotel. On Monday, the agency announced that it also had revoked the agents’ security clearance. At least 10 U.S. military personnel staying at the same hotel were also being investigated for their role in the alleged misconduct.
Two U.S. military officials said they include five Army Green Berets. Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity about an investigation that is still under way. One of the officials said the group also includes two Navy Explosive Ordinance Disposal technicians, two Marine dog handlers and an Air Force airman. The Special Forces Green Berets were working with Colombia’s counterterrorist teams, the official said. The agents and servicemen were in Colombia setting up security ahead of Obama’s three-day trip to the port city of Cartagena for a summit attended by about 30 other world leaders.
People briefed on the incident said the agents brought women back to Cartagena’s Hotel Caribe, where other members of the U.S. delegation and the White House corps also were staying. Anyone visiting the hotel overnight was required to leave identification at the front desk and leave the hotel by 7 a.m. When a woman failed to do so, by this account, it raised questions among hotel staff and police, who investigated. They found the woman with the agent in a hotel room and a dispute arose over whether the agent should have paid her.
While the identities of those being investigated have not been revealed, Maryland Republican Senate candidate Daniel Bongino told The Associated Press on Tuesday that his brother, an agent who was on duty in Colombia, is “cooperating” with the investigation. Bongino, a former agent himself, insisted his brother was not a target of the investigation. The Secret Service has insisted Obama’s security was not undermined by the incident, which happened before he arrived in Colombia. In at least one of his briefings with lawmakers, Sullivan said he was calling on an inspector general to hold an independent review. Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, welcomed that news, saying an independent review “should help the agency regain some respect from the American taxpayers and from people around the world.” The Secret Service did not immediately respond to a request for comment about Grassley’s account.
The agents, and others who allegedly brought prostitutes into their Cartagena, Colombia hotel rooms brought the call girls “into contact with sensitive security information,” the Chair and ranking Democrat on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform wrote to Mark J. Sullivan, the director of the U.S. Secret Service today. Sources tell ABC news that his was a reference to Sullivan, in a Monday meeting with congressional investigators, expressing concern that there was sensitive information in one or more of the rooms at the Hotel Caribe.The charge is contained in a letter from Reps. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., and Elijah Cummings, D-Md., who wrote to Sullivan today that the “nation’s capacity to protect the President, the Vice President, and visiting foreign leaders, among others, is dependent on the character and judgment of the agents and officers of the U.S. Secret Service. The actions of at least 11 agents and officers in Colombia last week showed an alarming lack of both.
“The facts as you described them raised questions about the agency’s culture,” the two congressmen write. “The incident in Cartagena is troubling because Secret Service agents and officers made a range of bad decisions, from drinking too much, to engaging with prostitutes, to bringing foreign nationals into contact with sensitive security information, to exposing themselves to blackmail and other forms of potential compromise.”
In addition, the committee leaders asked for detailed information about the incident, including a “description of the Secret Service’s current understanding of possible agent misconduct that occurred on the evening of Wednesday, April 11 and the morning of Thursday, April 12″; a “complete description and account of all U.S. Government personnel who were involved in or had contemporaneous knowledge of misconduct by agents and officers”; a timeline; summaries of all disciplinary actions since 2002 that have been taken against the 11 agents and officers involved in the Colombian incident; and a determination as to whether “all women involved in this incident were at least 18 years of age.”
MONTGOMERY COUNTY, Texas — (DMN) – Police do not think 30-year old Verna McClain had an accomplice yesterday when she shot and killed 28-year old Kala Golden and kidnapped her 3-day-old son Keegan Schuchardt outside a pediatric clinic in the Woodlands area north of Houston. Authorities do say that McClain had suffered a recent miscarriage and told her fiance’ she was pregnant with his child. They planned to marry in May. After she had a miscarriage, they say, McClain decided to find another baby and convince her fiance’ it was his.
She allegedly killed Kala Golden and abducted Keegan Schuchardt from outside a pediatrician’s office in suburban Houston. Keegan was found unharmed hours later with McClain’s sister. McClain now faces a capital murder charge and is being held without bail. Her fiance, who was not identified, is being interviewed by authorities. Montgomery County deputies say McClain — a licensed vocational nurse— went to the Northwood Pediatric Center to find a woman with a baby. “We think she knew the patterns of the pediatric center because she’d taken her children there in the past,” said Lt. Dan Norris with the Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office.
Kala Golden took her baby to Northwood for a checkup. When she returned to her truck, McClain was waiting with a handgun, according to authorities. “An altercation erupted with the suspect. The suspect shot Kala several times, then took the child from the pickup,” said Montgomery County Sheriff Tommy Gage. Despite her wounds, deputies said Golden tried to get the baby away from McClain. The suspect hit the dying mother with her car as Golden reached into the Lexus screaming, “My baby!” according to Norris. An Amber Alert was issued for the baby, 3-day-old Keegan Schuchardt. Golden was rushed to Memorial Hermann in The Woodlands where she died.
Hours after the abduction, detectives who canvassed parking lots in the area spotted a Lexus fitting the description of the killer’s car at the Fawn Ridge apartment complex, located in the 12400 block of Sawmill Rd. While officers were searching the complex for the missing child, they said McClain showed up and asked to speak to them. Investigators said McClain admitted to shooting Golden so she could take the baby, and told investigators where Keegan was. Texas Rangers found the child at a home off FM 1960, where McClain’s parents live, around 8:15 p.m. Tuesday. The baby was with McClain’s sister, deputies said. He was not harmed.
The sheriff’s office said that McClain tried to represent Keegan as her own child to family members. Her sister allegedly told authorities that McClain had plans to “do the adoption” after taking Keegan. Keegan was placed in CPS custody, but was released to unnamed family members late Wednesday morning. Keegan’s father, Keith Schuchardt, said he did not have his son. Schuchardt said he hasn’t yet signed Keegan’s birth certificate, complicating the process of getting his child back. “My son-in-law is trying to get his child, and they got to run background checks on everybody before we can even get our baby back. My daughter’s baby. It was my daughter that was murdered. And it’s just really sad,” said Linda Golden, the victim’s mother.
Keith Schuchardt said he was at work when he got the call about the shooting, and by the time he got to the hospital, his wife was dead. He said he didn’t know why anyone would want to harm her. “It’s just a random thing, I think. We don’t have any enemies. I don’t know why anyone would do it. Maybe she lost her baby and wanted a baby … or to sell him. I want to get my baby back. I know that,” Schuchardt said. Though initial reports from the scene of the abduction indicated there was a man in the car with McClain, detectives on Wednesday morning said they believe she acted alone. Still, the investigation was ongoing, and investigators were planning to examine evidence and conduct additional interviews later in the day.
14-year old Kenneth Weishuhn liked boys…and he died for it. Bullying has turned America’s schoolyards into killing fields. The situation that led to Kenneth’s suicide is a familiar refrain. Kenneth’s schoolmates taunted, teased and he endured death threats sent to his cell phone via texts and, apparently, teachers and administrators at South O’Brien High School (Primghar, Iowa) were clueless as to what was going on. Sound familiar? It should and what it tells us is that not much has changed inside schools since 15-year old Billy Lucas killed himself after being kicked, taunted and teased in the halls of Greensburg (Indiana) High School two years ago. Greensburg staff also claimed ignorance at the hell that surrounded Billy.
Details about Kenneth’s death are still coming out and they are disturbing. Friends and family say his classmates sent him death threats on his cell phone and made him the subject of a Facebook hate group. Numerous media outlets are pointing to the 14-year-old’s Pinterest page. One section, titled “When I Get Married,” features photos of vintage menswear, candle centerpieces and wedding cake toppers depicting two grooms. Another section, titled “Inspiration,” includes a number of anti-bullying sentiments, along with a quote attributed to “Glee” actor Chris Colfer: “There’s nothing wrong with you, there’s a lot wrong with the world you live in.”
Sister Kayla Weishuhn said Kenneth was actually quite popular before he came out last month. “He had a lot of friends but once they found out he was gay a lot of them turned on him.” Kayla, a sophomore, told KCAU-TV before noting that many of her classmates also bullied her brother: “I was just really mad because those guys were supposed to be my friends and they were making fun of my brother. I tried to stick up for him a couple of times but I guess it wasn’t enough.” Weishuhn’s death also prompted LGBT advocacy group One Iowa and Iowa Safe Schools to issue a statement. “The loss of Kenneth Weishuhn is both tragic and heartbreaking,” wrote One Iowa Interim Executive Director Calla Rongerude. “Our hearts and prayers go out to the Weishuhn family and to the community of Primghar. We all have lost a bright young man with a promising future.”
“What Kenneth endured is something that no one should have to go through. Kenneth made the brave choice to live his life openly and fully, and he was targeted at school with taunts, hurtful online organizing against him and even death threats. No one, especially the most vulnerable members of our community, should face bullying and threats of violence simply for being who they are. “We have a responsibility as a community to foster acceptance and love for all of our youth. We need to make sure that students have the support and resources they need to thrive and grow. One Iowa will work towards the day when all lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people can live their lives openly and without fear.”
In the weeks before his death, Kenneth Weishuhn hid his pain with a smile, family members said. They knew Kenneth, 14, was harassed at South O’Brien High School after telling people he was gay, but the freshman assured them things were fine, said his mother, Jeannie Chambers. “When I talked to him, he blew it off,” she said, “like it wasn’t a big deal.” Chambers said what the family didn’t realize — and what school administrators also say they didn’t know — was the full barrage of hate being directed at Kenneth, who committed suicide Sunday.
There were threatening cell phone calls and voicemails, she said, and harassing comments online. Officials at South O’Brien schools will evaluate what happened after students get through the initial grief over Kenneth’s death, but they do not plan to make any policy changes, said Superintendent Dan Moore. What they will do, he said, is find out how they can make sure students get the policy’s message that bullying isn’t acceptable. “We have all the things in place to deal with it,” Moore said. “We just need to continue to educate the kids on what is and what is not acceptable.”
Chambers and Kenneth’s sister, Kayla Weishuhn, 16, said they think school administrators didn’t do enough to protect him from boys who began yelling slurs at him in the hallways late last month. Teachers began standing in the hallways after someone complained and addressed bullying at a school assembly, Kayla said, but that didn’t stop the bullies. School staff should have had an assembly for parents and students, to make both aware of the issue, Chambers said. She said she wasn’t contacted by the school, and followed her son’s request not to reach out to administrators. The harassment died down when the bullies shifted their focus on a pregnant girl and he feared intervention would put the target back on him, she said. “I didn’t contact the school, which I should of, but he was just like, ‘Mom, please don’t … You’ll make it worse,” Chambers said.
Kayla said some students started posting slurs and hateful messages on an online support group started by one of her friends. Somebody started an online hate page against gay people and sent online invitations to all of Kenneth’s friends, she said. Kenneth mistook the invitations as support for the page, Kayla said. “Someone from our school had called my brother and left him death threats, voicemails, saying that he didn’t deserve to live, that God hated him and that they were going to kill him,” said Kayla, who listened to one of the messages. Chambers didn’t know the real content of those messages, which Kenneth told her he deleted.
School administrators dealt with the only incident they knew about, Moore said. He did not have details about what happened, but said school staff and counselors spoke with parents and students involved. “I feel the school did address the issue that they were aware of when it came to their attention,” Moore said. “We did address the issue. Obviously, we had no idea that we’d have an end result like this, or what was going on outside of here.” Even if administrators had known about the online comments, he said, they may not have gotten involved unless the conduct carried over into the school building.
O’Brien County Sheriff’s Office officials are investigating the death. Chambers said they took his cell phone, reviewed his Facebook account and examined the computer he used at his grandmother’s house. Chambers said she’ll leave decisions about criminal charges to the police. She just wants the bullying to stop. “I just hope that they see what they took from us and I really hope that it touches their heart for them to never, ever want to bully somebody again,” she said. “If that’s the one thing that comes out of this, that would make me happy.” Punishing bullies with suspension, detention or other consequences isn’t enough to address the problem, said Nate Monson, director of Iowa Safe Schools.
School officials also should try to find out what’s going on in the lives of the aggressors, who often are dealing with their own problems, and provide additional support for the victim, he said. “You also need to tie it into some other kind of thing going on,” Monson said. “Whether that’s counseling for that student who did the bullying as well as that student who was the target of the bullying.”
Other LGBT Bullying cases:
In January, just one month after filming an “It Gets Better” video in support of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) youth, 19-year-old Eric James Borges took his own life. Borges, who went by EricJames among friends, worked as an intern with The Trevor Project, and as a supplemental instructor at the College of the Sequoias, according to Queer Landia blogger Jim Reeves.
Jacob Rogers had been bullied at Cheatham County Central High School (Tennessee) for the past four years, but at the start of his senior year, it had become so bad he dropped out of school before taking his own life. “He started coming home his senior year saying ‘I don’t want to go back. Everyone is so mean. They call me a faggot, they call me gay, a queer,’” friend Kaelynn Mooningham said.
Eighteen-year-old Jeffrey Fehr, who was known as a skilled athlete and previously served as the first male captain of his high school’s cheerleading squad, hanged himself on New Year’s Day in the front entrance of his family’s Granite Bay (California) home after enduring what his parents describe as a lifetime of anti-gay bullying.
The disturbing rash of LGBT teen suicides began receiving attention last fall. Among those who took their own life was Tyler Clementi, an 18-year-old Rutgers University student who jumped off the George Washington Bridge between New Jersey and New York after his roommate allegedly filmed him having sex with another man.
Seth Walsh, a 13-year-old California teen, hung himself in September 2010 after reportedly being bullied because he was gay.
Gay Rhode Island-based student Raymond S. Chase, 19, became the fifth in 2010′s disturbing spate of teen suicides last fall.
In November 2010, Jim Swilley, the pastor of a Georgia megachurch, revealed to his congregation that he is gay. The 52-year-old father of four said the recent spate of teen suicides, particularly that of Clementi, prompted him to change his mind. “For some reason his situation was kind of the tipping point with me,” Swilley told CNN’s Don Lemon this weekend.
In June, “Harry Potter” actor Daniel Radcliffe was honored with the Trevor Project’s “Hero” Award for his ongoing suicide prevebtion efforts for LGBT youth.
In September, Jamey Rodemeyer, a 14-year-old boy from Williamsville, N.Y., took his life Sunday after what his parents claim was years of bullying because of struggles with his sexuality, months after posting this “It Gets Better” clip on YouTube.
After vowing to stop bullying and make it illegal, Lady Gaga — a longtime advocate for LGBT causes — dedicated a performance to Rodemeyer at the iHeartRadio Music Festival in Las Vegas. “I wrote this record about how your identity is really all you’ve got when you’re in school,” Gaga told the crowd. “So tonight, Jamey, I know you’re up there looking at us, and you’re not a victim. You’re a lesson to all of us.”
Days after being faced with a petition that urged her to publicly address gay bullying in her district, Rep. Michele Bachmann noted, “That’s not a federal issue,” according to CBS News. Previously, Tammy Aaberg, the mother of Justin Aaberg, a gay teen in the Anoka-Hennepin school district who committed suicide after having been bullied in area schools, delivered petitions to Bachmann’s office asking her for support.
Jamie Hubley, a gay 15-year-old from Ottawa, Canada, committed suicide Oct. 14. In this clip, the teen performs Mike Posner’s “Cooler Than Me.”
Bullying needs to become a hate crime. When human beings encourage another human being by words or actions to kill themselves, they need to be held accountable under the law and charged. Parents, if you don’t know what your kids are doing at school, YOU have a problem. While these kids are tormenting and bullying their classmates, somewhere they are learning that this is acceptable behavior. Step up and stop it!
HOUSTON, Texas — (DMN) – A 30-year old Texas woman has been charged with capital murder for killing the mother of a 3-day-old baby she is also accused of kidnapping. Verna McClain (pictured above) is accused of fatally shooting 28-year old Kala Golden who was leaving a pediatric clinic in the Woodlands area north of Houston with her baby yesterday afternoon. Court documents filed in Montgomery County say that McClain was licensed as a vocational nurse in Texas on Oct. 21, 2010 and has no disciplinary actions against her, authorities say she was not employed at the pediatric clinic where the shooting occurred and the baby was abducted.
“Ms. McClain is currently charged with capital murder. Here in Texas, capital murder requires a felony to have been committed in the course of committing the murder,” said Brett Ligon with the Montgomery County DA’s Office. “It’s obviously something we take very seriously and as part of it, we are requesting Ms. McClain be held with no bond.” Events unfolded in the parking lot of a clinic off Borough Park and Sawdust in The Woodlands late yesterday afternoon. Investigators say Kala Golden, 28, was leaving a check-up with her three-day-old son, Keegan Schuchardt, when she got into an argument with McClain in a parked Lexus.
The woman snatched the baby from Goldern’s arms and went to drive away in a blue or light green Lexus, according to witness accounts. The dying woman leaned into the vehicle and tried to take Keegan back, screaming “My baby!” but her attacker sped away after striking the mother and leaving her lying in the parking lot. A second person in the vehicle has not been identified. Golden was transported to Memorial Hermann Hospital where she was later pronounced dead.
Authorities developed new leads that led them to an apartment in Harris County, where they found the infant. Court documents detail how McClain’s sister told authorities that McClain had been wanting to adopt a child and now had that child. “There were statements as indicated in the arrest record which were made by Ms. McClain that led us to believe that this was an intentional act on her part, not that Ms. Golden was targeted specifically, but that this was part of a plan to kidnap a child,” Ligon said. Court documents also say that McClain admitted to shooting Golden and taking the newborn.
Relatives of the slain woman declined to comment Tuesday when approached by a reporter outside their Spring home. Golden’s husband, Keith, recently announced the birth of his son on his Facebook page. “Baby Keegan is here,” he posted Sunday. “Born 4/14/12, 6 lbs 15 oz, 20 inches long. Looks like me lol.” Police found the boy, Keegan Schuchardt, unharmed at about 8 p.m. on Tuesday. Ligon said the boy, Keegan Schuchardt, had been in the care of Child Protective Services. A CPS spokeswoman, Gwen Carter, said the boy has since been reunited with family members. He was never in the legal custody of CPS, she said. She said CPS workers assisted police to make sure the family’s home environment was safe for the boy and that his relatives were aware of what needed to be done to keep him safe. He and his two siblings are with the same relatives, she added.
KTRK-TV, KHOU-TV and the Houston Chronicle contributed to this report.
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Kala Golden’s family said she lived for her kids and died trying to defend her newborn son. “My daughter was brutally murdered protecting her baby,” said Linda Golden. Witnesses said Kala argued with the kidnapper and was shot several times, but still she tried to get her baby out of the attacker’s car. The driver ran over her while getting away, police said. The mother’s husband of three years said if the suspect, Verna McClain, did this allegedly because of a miscarriage, then Kala knew all about that kind of heartbreak. “My wife, herself, she’s had you know miscarriages, She didn’t run off and go [take] someone else’s baby, take someone’s life, you know,” said Keith Schuchardt.
