Foster mom arrested in Roseville twin toddlers’ drowning deaths. Biological mother has ‘hope’
The Roseville Police Department arrested a woman Monday in connection to the deaths of twin toddlers who drowned while staying with their foster family last year, according to court records and the victims’ family.
Schitara Page, the 37-year-old foster mother, was arrested after a criminal complaint was filed Thursday in Placer Superior Court. An arrest warrant was issued the same day.
Page is scheduled to be arraigned Wednesday after prosecutors charged her with two felony counts of child abuse or endangering children leading to great bodily injury or death.
Roseville police officers were called Oct. 9 at a home in the Waterford Glen neighborhood after receiving reports of two unresponsive children in a swimming pool. They were later identified as Legend and Sincere Strong, 2, who were remembered by their biological mother as children who loved to smile.
“I am happy that they picked up the case,” biological mother Alize Strong said Tuesday in a phone interview. “But I want to know more” about the case.
Page’s charges include allegations that the children suffered willful harm or injuries which resulted in death, according to court records. She is being held in custody at South Placer Jail in lieu of $100,000 bail.
The details of the accusation were not immediately clear. Lt. Chris Ciampa, a spokesman for the Roseville Police Department, and Stephanie Herrera, a spokeswoman for the Placer County District Attorney’s Office, did not immediately return requests for comment Tuesday.
Sacramento County Child Protective Services conducted an investigation in November into the deaths and found that a caregiver improperly supervised the boys. But the manner of their deaths was not determined, at that time, to be a crime, according to The Sacramento Bee’s previous reporting.
Page, whose named was redacted in the CPS reports, told law enforcement she “looked away for five minutes” before she found the twins in the pool, according to the mandatory suspected child abuse report filed to California Department of Social Services officials. She called 911 and began performing CPR, the heavily redacted report said.
“(It’s) unknown how long the children were in the pool,” the report said.
Page also told authorities she was working upstairs when the incident happened and thought the boys were asleep. The reports noted Page has declined to answer any more questions asked by law enforcement.
There were no prior neglect or abuse investigations of Page conducted by law enforcement at the home, a risk assessment of the home said.
Strong, the biological mother, said she still doesn’t know what happened to her children. But, she said, the arrest gives her hope to get answers for what happened to her boys.
