The police probe into the August disappearance and death of 2-year-old Maliyah Bass — whom a jogger found floating in the Brays Bayou — unearthed a trove of inconsistencies, according to court records.
Investigators, in a search warrant filed this month, outlined the contradicting statements that the girl’s mother, Sahara Ervin, and her boyfriend, Travion Thompson, during the initial search for little Maliyah and the statements shared following the discovery of her body, including where Thompson was when the girl reportedly vanished. The couple took exception to a police tracking dog in their Alief-area apartment complex.
Records show the warrant was aimed at Facebook so the investigator could obtain access to Ervin’s social media accounts. Ervin and Thompson were charged in October with tampering with evidence — in this case a human corpse — and injury to a child in connection to Maliyah’s death, which the Harris County Institute of Forensic Science last month deemed a homicide.
The girl was found Aug. 23 — hours after an Amber Alert was issued — about 15 miles from her apartment and in the water along the Brays Bayou Greenway Trail. Police believe she floated to the Gulfgate neighborhood through a drainage system that flowed into the bayou. By the time she was found, investigators believe she had been dead for a day or two.
According to the search warrant, the couple each said Ervin was outside with the toddler but Thompson called her inside to make him noodles for breakfast. That’s why the girl was left unsupervised for eight minutes at an apartment complex playground, he alleged. But police reviewed crime scene photos and found no evidence that anyone had been using the kitchen, according to the search warrant.
Thompson continued to contradict himself when he said the girl went out to play while he stayed inside to play videos games. In a separate statement, he claimed to have been busy sweeping the floor, an investigator wrote in the sworn statement.
Police scrutinized the initial 911 call that Ervin made the morning of Aug. 22 to report her daughter as missing. In it, she said Thompson had been asleep, according to court records.
“This statement is inconsistent with the story that Travion had called Sahara back in the house to make food,” the investigator continued.
The investigator was also keenly aware of how Thompson and Ervin behaved as patrol officers combed the apartment complex for any trace of the missing toddler. His impression, based on a review of police body-worn camera footage, was that Ervin and Thompson made no attempt to look for the toddler.
The couple, he wrote, went as far to tell officers — a statement recorded in the footage — that they did not want a tracking dog. The dog sniffed from the apartment complex to a nearby field, where the couple stopped the dog handler and attempted to lead him back to the complex. The couple then told police they did not want a tracking dog at all.
“Why y’all check the door-to-door,” the court documents quoted Thompson as saying.
“If y’all can’t find her in the apartments bro, I don’t even wanna look bro because at the end of the day she could be anywhere right now,” he continued, according to records.
Adding to the couple’s problematic narrative was that an upstairs neighbor who told police he never saw the girl or the mother on the playground even though he was outside drinking coffee and having a smoke at the reported time of her disappearance, records show. Police found that surveillance footage also failed to show the child wandering off or a possible abductor fleeing with the girl.
In fact, the footage did not show the child at all.
The girl was last seen alive and healthy on the video around midnight Aug. 20, when her caretakers took her to a convenience store.
Police reviewed footage from the night of Aug. 21 that showed Thompson leaving the apartment with a large trash can over his shoulder. Ervin stood outside waiting for him to return, the investigator wrote. He eventually walked to the area of a storm drain and sat on the sidewalk until someone in a car drove off. He then returned to the apartment. The couple went to the convenience store about a half hour later.
Thompson, following his arrest, admitted to disposing of Maliyah’s body, according to police. He told investigators that he heard Ervin beat the girl with a hair brush because she would not go to bed. The girl was crying out in pain but he “remained in the bedroom and played his video games and did not interfere,” police wrote. The child was forced to sleep in a broom closet that night and her mother found her dead the next morning.
Thompson and Ervin remain jailed on the charges.
The search warrant also made note of Thompson’s tearful remarks to reporters about how he felt like a father to the girl. He then claimed to have last seen Maliyah before she went to the park. The child, he said, had been upset because he had broken her toy box. He gave her the pillow case to carry her toys instead, Thompson continued.
Police were unable to find the pillow case or the toys — described in court documents as wooden blocks — that were inside.
nicole.hensley@chron.com
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Search warrant outlines couple’s inconsistent statements after Maliyah Bass’ disappearance and death - Houston Chronicle
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