The 13-year-old remains in the hospital and the defendant, Lawrence Clinton Chambers, remains in jail. Prosecutors said that he turned himself in to Houston police to face the charges for these crimes.
Police started looking for Lawrence the moment his wife Jemal Chambers, 43, was discovered dead by her teenage daughter. Jemal's 13-year-old son was found near her body and he was critically injured. It happened at their home late Sunday on Houston's south side.
"She found her mother dead and her brother clinging to life," a prosecutor said. "She said there was no forced entry into the residence. The front door and burglar bars were locked."
Lawrence Chambers was nowhere to be found at the time and the newly-released details about the case create a disturbing picture. Prosecutors believe the two were stabbed and beaten with a skillet. Jemal was stabbed 119 times, many of the wounds to the back of the head.
"The knife that was recovered at the scene was consistent with the stab wounds of the victims," the prosecutor said in court. "There was also a shattered skillet, consistent with blunt force trauma at the scene."
According to prosecutors' court statements, Lawrence Chambers confessed to his brother, Chris Johnson.
"Jemal Chambers, who was his wife, had come at him with a knife and that he had lost it and had stabbed her," the prosecutor said. "The witness Johnson said that the defendant could not remember what he did to the juvenile victim."
But according to the prosecutor in court, it wasn't a case of self-defense. The prosecutor stated the defendant appears to have forced his way into a bedroom where the victim was. There was damage to the frame of the door.
All of it was enough to convince a judge to keep Chambers in jail for now, without bond. He is charged with murder and injury to a child. He is scheduled to appear in court again on Thursday.
___________________________________________________________
Take ABC13 with you!
Download our free apps for iPhone, iPad, Android and Blackberry devices
