E. Houston fire kills twin girls while mom is away

E. Houston fire kills twin girls while mom is away
By MIKE GLENN Copyright 2008 Houston Chronicle
Dec. 10, 2008, 7:38PM
On a wet, gray, bone-chilling afternoon, Curnitra Winzer stood outside her east Houston home and gazed sadly at a blackened shell of a neighbor's home littered with remnants of two young lives that had been snuffed out.

"It's terrible," Winzer said on Wednesday, looking at the duplex where 18-month-old twin girls had died in a fire early that morning after their mother left them to go to the store. "It's a sad thing for kids to die so young."

On the lawn outside the small wood-frame home in the 1700 block of Sam Wilson were the remains of a charred couch, on which the babies' bodies were found.

Nearby lay a small plastic bag filled with red-and-green striped Christmas candy canes.

The girls, Shakayla and Makayla Carroll, were the daughters of LaVera Moore, who police said had left two stovetop burners on to provide heat while she stepped out around midnight to buy cigarettes at a nearby store.

She returned about 12:20 a.m. to find smoke gushing from the house, investigators said.
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