US woman jailed for abandoning 8 kids for Nigerian internet lover

30.01.2008

A woman accused of leaving eight children in a cocroach-infested home before she travelled to Africa to marry a man she met on the Internet was in the Harris County Jail yesterday.

Shanell Monique Mosley, 33, is charged with child endangerment and child abandonment, according to court records. She is scheduled to appear in Harris County's 248th District Court today.

When she left for Nigeria on December 31, Mosley told her 15-year-old daughter that she would return in a month to the home in the 11000 block of Barker Grove Lane, child welfare officials said. Days after the woman left, officials said they knew little about Mosley or her home situation.

The family is from New Orleans, but came to Texas — originally Port Arthur - after Hurricane Katrina. Relying mostly on information gathered from her children, CPS officials believe Mosley was unemployed.

"We don't know how she was able to make payments on the home or if she has assistance," CPS spokeswoman, Estella Olguin, said earlier this month.

Mosley's sister was supposed to have arrived in Houston from New Orleans to take care of the children during her absence, but officials said that never happened.

"We did talk to the (children's) aunt. She just didn't have the money to come here," Olguin said. That left the children, including a one-year-old boy, in the care of the overwhelmed 15-year-old, officials said.