Monday, March 19, 2012 - Updated 52 minutes ago
A Salem mother is facing gruesome assault accusations after officials say she slashed the throats of her two children and then set her apartment on fire, horrific charges that a family member called “devastating.”
“I can’t speak right, I’m too discombobulated,” Deborah Cox, the aunt of 25-year-old Tanicia Goodwin, said by phone this morning. Goodwin is expected to be arraigned today in Salem District Court on two counts of assault with intent to murder, two counts assault and battery with a dangerous weapon, and arson, according to the Essex District Attorney’s Office.
Cox said she hadn’t spoken with Goodwin since December, but said through tears that she’s usually “very connected” to her niece.
“It’s surprising ... especially when you have family you can call,” she said. “I have no idea what happened. I know it was a flash on the news and everybody is calling me.”
Firefighters responded shortly before 9 p.m., yesterday to a seventh-floor fire at a Pope Street apartment complex, where they found the two children, 3 and 8 years old, with life-threatening injuries, one inside the burning apartment and the second in an adjacent apartment, according to a Salem Fire Department release.
The two children were in critical condition at Children’s Hospital in Boston, authorities said. Cox said she had spoken with hospital staff this morning, but “they don’t know when they’re going to let me see them.”
The blaze, which jakes extinguished within 15 minutes, displaced 50 people, though officials with the Salem fire department and the state fire marshal’s office are still investigating the cause.
Material from the Associated Press was used in this report.
-— matthew.stout@bostonherald.com
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