Christy Sheats had been suffering from depression and was seeing a therapist, her husband said. He also said she was a heavy drinker, according to police. She had been admitted to a mental health facility in the past, the sheriff said at a press conference.
“It just seems like an argument — a domestic disturbance in a family, that turns into a shooting where a mother went out and shot her two daughters — somebody would say she’s got mental health issues because who in her right mind would do that,” Nehls told the Houston Chronicle. “That will be our job here, that will be the investigators’ focus now for the next coming days, to try and pinpoint the motive. And if she was suffering from some type of mental illness, what type of outreach, what type of help she was getting.
“I think you want to know, did the system fail her? Did we fail her? Did her family fail her? I would want to know. I would want to get to the bottom of it,” Nehls said.
Neighbors told reporters they had never heard of any problems involving the family.
“They were always cheerful and never depressed. You never heard anything bad about them,” Austin Enke told the Houston Chronicle.
“This is sad knowing a good family and this is what happened,” neighbor Fazz Zainuddin told KPRC-TV.
Another neighbor told the news station, “The mother was nice. You wouldn’t expect it if they told you this is what was going to happen. I don’t think anybody, at least a sane person, would do that.”
Christy Sheats’ friend, Catherine Knowles, told KTRK-TV, “This is not the Christy that I know. It’s just not. I thought it was the wrong person. It had to be.”
Knowles told the news station, “When you meet her, you know she’s a mom within the first minute. I couldn’t imagine anything in her life that could’ve made her snap. Your own children, I don’t know what could possibly go through someone’s head.”: