Harris County mother charged after daughters found dead in Katy pool

Laura Nicholson was arrested in Florida after Harris County prosecutors charged the 23-year-old with two counts of injury to a child in the deaths of her two daughters, ages 2 and 3, who were found in the backyard pool at their Katy home.

Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez said Nicholson was booked into the Lee County Jail after the arrest. Harris County homicide detectives said Nicholson was charged May 8 and arrested May 11 in Lee County by the Violent Criminal Apprehension Team working with the Florida/Caribbean Regional Fugitive Task Force.

The girls were found dead Feb. 11 at the home on Creek Edge Court. Investigators said their grandmother left the house around 9:30 a.m. and returned just after 11 a.m., then found both children in the pool. Nicholson told investigators she had fallen asleep on the couch while the children were playing in the living room.

Court records say the back-door latch leading to the pool was broken or not working properly, and investigators described the pool area as unfenced. Nicholson also said the latch had been a problem for two days. One account said the children were flown to a Houston hospital before they died.

Autopsies later found cocaine and a cocaine metabolite in both girls’ blood, but the medical examiner could not definitively confirm or rule out drowning as the cause of death. That leaves prosecutors with a case that reaches beyond a tragic pool accident and into the question of what happened in the home before the children were found.

The criminal charge matters because Texas law treats injury to a child as a felony when a person intentionally, knowingly, recklessly or with criminal negligence causes bodily injury or serious bodily injury to a child. As of Tuesday, court records did not list a defense attorney for Nicholson.

The stakes in Harris County are especially stark because drowning remains the leading cause of accidental death for children ages 1 to 4, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Texas child-drowning trackers showed 10 child drownings in 2026, underscoring how quickly a household hazard can turn deadly when a pool is accessible and young children are left without protection.