Sherin’s foster father charged with murder

Houston, January 13

The Indian-American foster father of Sherin Mathews, a three-year-old Indian girl whose body was found in a culvert near their suburban Dallas home in mysterious circumstances last October, was today indicted for capital murder by a grand jury.

The murder charge, which could carry the death penalty, was filed against Wesley Mathews, 37, after an autopsy in the death of the toddler adopted from an orphanage in Bihar showed that she died of “homicidal violence”.

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Sherin’s foster mother, 35-year-old Sini Mathews, was also indicted on a charge of abandoning a child. The punishment for that ranges from two to 20 years in prison, with a fine up to USD 10,000.

Authorities have not said what happened to Sherin, and court documents only allege that Mathews caused his daughter’s death using a deadly weapon “by a manner and means unknown to the grand jury”.

“We can’t go into details, but based on that autopsy report, we were able to determine that we can seek capital murder for this case,” Dallas County District Attorney Faith Johnson said. — PTI