DURHAM, N.C., Sept. 23 (UPI) — A North Carolina man who police say tried to drown his three children in a pond last weekend will now face a murder charge, after his three-year-old daughter died Wednesday, officials said.
Alan Tysheen Eugene Lassiter was arrested and charged with attempted murder Sunday, after a police officer rescued his kids from a pond at their apartment complex.
Initially, investigators said, Lassiter flagged down people driving by the complex and told them someone had kidnapped his son. In searching for the boy, a police officer who lives in the complex found the girls in the pond.
The girls, aged five and three, were pulled from the pond and hospitalized. Police said the seven-year-old boy got away from his father to get help. He was unharmed.
Officials said the five-year-old girl was hospitalized and released, but her three-year-old sister died Wednesday — meaning officials will likely upgrade one of the charges to murder.
Lassiter has been jailed on a $2.25 million bond.
According to authorities, Lassiter, 29, also admitted to a 911 dispatcher that he tried to kill his children — and that he said child protective services officials were trying to remove them from his household because Lassiter had been seeking therapy for having a sexual attraction to children, The New York Times reported.
Lassiter’s wife had filed for a protective order in 2009, WNCN-TV reported Wednesday.
