She told police her grandson crawled into a tub of hot water. Now she faces trial on a murder charge.
Child Protective Services had just given Patricia Flores custody of her 2-year-old grandson, Lyfe Flores, whose parents weren't able to take care of him. The toddler was somehow scalded at her house in Haltom City in March, and Flores waited nearly a week to call 911.
By the time Lyfe got to a hospital, there was no saving him.
Police were immediately suspicious of Flores' story that Lyfe crawled into a tub of mop water while her back was turned. Other relatives said they saw missing teeth and welts around the boy's head.
Police issued a warrant to arrest Flores on a charge of injury to a child, but she fled before they could lock her up. They eventually captured her outside of San Antonio.
"She waited so long and the injuries were so severe, and so obviously severe ... it seems highly unlikely that it was an accidental case," Haltom City police spokesman Matt Spillane said in June, when an autopsy determined that Lyfe's death was a homicide.
But police didn't know at the time whether Flores would face trial in that homicide or on a lesser charge like child injury. That was up to a grand jury, which WFAA-TV (Channel 8) reports made the decision this week to try the grandmother on a felony murder charge.
Spillane was trying to reach the Tarrant County district attorney's office this weekend to confirm the news.
