HOUSTON – Surveillance video showed a man charged in connection with the death of Maliyah Bass dumping a trash bag into a storm drain upstream from where the 2-year-old girl’s body was found in a bayou, prosecutors said in court Thursday.
Sahara Ervin, Maliyah’s mother, and Travion Thompson, Ervin’s boyfriend, have each been charged with evidence tampering and injury to a child in connection with Maliyah’s death.
The judge denied bond for Thompson after prosecutors said surveillance video showed him taking a trash bag out to a bin near a storm drain that leads to a bayou. Prosecutors said Thompson can later be seen tipping the bin into the storm drain. Maliyah’s body was later found in Brays Bayou.
Prosecutors said the view of the camera was partially obscured by a tree.
Ervin was granted a $75,000 bond on the tampering charge and a $100,000 bond on the injury to a child charge.
On Aug. 22, Thompson and Ervin told reporters that Ervin left Maliyah alone for 5 minutes at a neighborhood playground while she was cooking. Then the couple claimed they couldn’t find Maliyah and that she had been kidnapped.