The Scary Significance of the Gun the Texas Mom Used to Kill Her Daughters
After a news conference on Wednesday, chilling new details surrounding a Texas mom's killing of her two daughters last week have started to emerge - including the reason Christy Sheats had access to a gun in the first place.
According to Fort Bend County Sheriff Troy Nehls, police are currently looking into an allegation from her husband, Jason, that Sheats was previously denied a license-to-carry permit in Texas due to her mental health issues. As Nehls elaborated, Sheats had been struggling with depression and had attempted suicide multiple times, including three separate occasions in which she was admitted to a private mental health facility. Her husband also claimed that she'd been taking "numerous" medications for her depression and had been regularly seeing a therapist.
Nehls then went on to explain that Sheats' relationship with her husband had been in a "downward spiral" since the death of her grandfather in 2012 - and, horrifyingly, that the handgun she'd used to kill her daughters, Taylor and Madison, had been handed down to her from him after he died.
A quick look at her Facebook shows just how much Sheats cared for her grandfather and, subsequently, how big of a toll it took on her after he died. Multiple pictures show him holding Sheats' daughters as infants.
"Father's Day is almost unbearable for me without this amazing man," she wrote in a now haunting Facebook post in 2015. "He was the best part of my life and an essential part of my world. I wish I could thank him one more time for everything he did for me, taught me, and for the way he protected me and truly cared for me. Most of all, for raising me. I love and miss my Pa-paw beyond words."
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