Judge set bond at $4.5 million for mom accused of abusing twin teens
By Erica Simon
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HARRIS COUNTY, Texas (KTRK) — After a court hearing Thursday afternoon, the jury announced the bond charges set in the case of a Cypress mother who is accused of abusing her twin teenagers.
Zaikiya Duncan, 40, was arrested in October in Baton Rouge. Authorities say Duncan and her 27-year-old boyfriend, Jova Terrell, abused the two 15-year-olds.
The state says Duncan was renting a $400,000 house in Cypress, and had only been in the Houston area since July after leaving Louisiana.
Officials said that when the twins were found, they were extremely malnourished, bruised, and had restraint marks. The girl was wearing a trash bag around her upper body.
Those kids managed to escape their home and seek help by knocking door-to-door in their neighborhood until one person let them in.
The defense asked for the bond to be lowered to $50,000 for each case.
But during Thursday’s hearing at the Harris County Criminal Courthouse, the two assault charges remained at $1 million each. The judge raised the two aggravated assault charges to $1.25 million each, totaling to a $4.5 million bond.
Duncan is accused of starving the twins, making them eat each other’s feces and urine, spraying Eazy Off a disinfectant in their mouths if they “talked too much,” and pouring bleach on the boy.
They were allegedly forced to drink water from pipes connecting to the washing machine, which weren’t sanitary.
The state also said, since being taken into custody, Duncan has made jail phone calls to someone in Louisiana, saying she had deleted videos and images from her home cameras.
Duncan’s attorneys say she is currently pregnant again, meaning she will have a total of nine children.
Duncan’s next court hearing is on Jan. 25, 2023. And more charges could come if a jury finds that she abused or harmed her other five children.
Duncan’s boyfriend, Terrell, is waiting to be extradited from Louisiana back to Texas.
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