Neighbors here are in total disbelief. They didn't know too much about the mom. The family mostly kept to themselves. Now residents are praying that the young girl recovers.
"She didn't seem like the kind of woman that would do that," said Bob Wilson.
He is talking about one of his neighbors who sits in jail, charged with attacking her teenage daughter with a knife.
"I just think it's terrible. You hear about it all the time. You don't think it's going to happen right here in your neighborhood," said Jeannie Wilson.
Authorities say 40-year-old Dequita Hoefling repeatedly stabbed her 13-year-old daughter in the back and neck as she slept in her bedroom. At 1:30am Thursday, the teenager's father rushed his daughter to the emergency room. Sheriff's deputies arrested Hoefling at home.
No one answered the door at the family's home on Kingsway Drive in the Lake Conroe West neighborhood. One resident who asked us not to show her face was visibly shaken when a neighbor broke the news to her.
"She used to come over when she was little and play on the trampoline," said the neighbor.
She says her daughter is friends with the young victim. They are both 8th graders at Pete Junior High School. According to the woman, the 13-year-old had recently been troubled by her mother's behavior. Neighbors say it was obvious there were problems at home.
"I've seen them fighting, yelling at the kids, coming and going in a hurry and stuff," said Bob Wilson.
The motive for the attack remains a mystery. Hoelfing is charged with aggravated assault.
The daughter was transferred from Conroe to Memorial Hermann Hospital for surgery and at last check she was in critical condition. Investigators told us she's expected to survive.
