HOUSTON – A 59-year-old woman has been arrested after police say she strangled her 79-year-old mother to death.
Suzette Kefauver has since been charged with murder. Her bond has been set at $1 million.
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On Friday, Nov. 11, deputies with the Harris County Sheriff’s Office responded to a medical call for service at a home in the 3300 block of Forest Knoll, near Beaumont Hwy (90) and the Sam Houston Tollway S.
Deputies said they found a 79-year-old woman unresponsive inside the home with signs of strangulation and bruising around her neck.
Deputies spoke with Kefauver, the woman’s daughter, who had been caring for and living with her mother for about a year.
Kefauver said she fed her mother a milkshake, stepped away for about five minutes, and returned to her mother sitting on the floor and leaning back on the sofa. She said she asked her mother what she was doing and her mother requested to be put back on the sofa.
Kefauver told deputies she then tried to pick her mother up by the neck and put her back on the sofa before using a gaits belt, which is typically used to transfer a person from a bed to a wheelchair, to lift her mother. The daughter said after several unsuccessful attempts to lift her mother from the floor, she noticed she may have stopped breathing.
According to deputies, Kefauver then went to a neighbor’s house to get help. The neighbor spoke with deputies and said Kefauver knocked on her door at 10:10 p.m. and asked if she could help lift her mother to the sofa. She also told deputies Kefauver said several times that she “did not hurt her momma and the marks on her neck were not from abuse.” The neighbor said the remarks were unsolicited.
When the neighbor entered the home, she said she saw the 79-year-old woman leaning on the sofa and did not appear to be breathing. She said she advised Kefauver to call 911 but she refused and asked her to help lift her mother. The neighbor said they attempted to lift the woman with the gait belt but were not successful. The neighbor said she then convinced the daughter to call 911.
An autopsy report ruled the 79-year-old woman’s death as a homicide, and the cause of death was blunt force trauma to the neck. The autopsy showed the woman’s neck was fractured and her spinal cord was severed.