A home health care nurse who is in the U.S. illegally and is accused of smothering an 81-year-old Texas woman to death may have more victims, police sources have told several news agencies.
Billy Kipkorir Chemirmir, 45, was taken into custody Tuesday after Lu Thi Harris was found dead from homicidal violence in her Dallas home, police said. A source told FOX 4 News that she was found with a pillow nearby and her makeup was smeared.
Plano police were tracking Chemirmir after another family reportedly became suspicious that he was stealing from a relative that he was treating. While following him on Tuesday, officers saw Chemirmir discard a jewelry box and found jewelry, cash and a set of keys on him, which they traced back to Harris’ home.
It was not immediately clear who Chemirmir worked for, but a police source told FOX 4 News that he is now being investigated for several recent home health care-related deaths in Plano and Richardson, in which the deceased were believed to have died of natural causes.
Two other possible victims have come forward and told police that he tried to sit on their chest and smother them with a pillow, the station added.
Chemirmir is currently being held in in Dallas County Jail on a $1 million bond and is facing a capital murder charge in Harris’ death.
Records show Chemirmir is in the U.S. illegally and has an immigration hold on him, according to Fox 4. Two Kenyan news websites reported that he hails from the African country.
Chemirmir previously was given trespass notices and was accused of posing as an employee at a retirement community in Dallas in 2016, WFAA reported.
He is also suspected of attacking a 93-year-old woman at an assisted living facility in Frisco in October 2017, the station added.
In that incident, a woman told police that a man knocked on her door claiming to be a maintenance worker and asked if she needed anything fixed.
After she denied, “the suspect then forcibly entered her assisted living apartment, knocked her from her walker and to the ground, then placed a pillow over her nose and mouth in an attempt to muffle her screams and smother her,” WFAA reported, citing a police affidavit.
She started praying because she was “believing she was about to die,” the affidavit added, before the suspect left with her jewelry box.
Police chiefs from multiple counties and district attorneys are expected to give an update on the investigation at 1 p.m. local time Friday.
