A mother’s afternoon nap in a San Antonio suburb ended in unimaginable horror on Saturday when she found her two small children dead inside a parked car, leading to her swift arrest amid glaring holes in her story. The siblings, 3-year-old Miyani Islar and her 6-year-old brother Sevani Stevenson, who lived with autism, turned up lifeless in the family vehicle outside their home in the Alamo Ranch neighborhood. Their mother, 28-year-old Tiona Lasaisha Islar, called 911 around 3:30 p.m. from the 7600 block of Chancery Gate, claiming she had last seen the kids alive at 10 a.m. inside the house before dozing off. She said she woke up hours later, spotted their bodies in the car, and carried them back indoors.
Bexar County deputies rushed to the scene and tried CPR on both children right away, but emergency medics soon declared them dead on the spot. With temperatures pushing 92 degrees Fahrenheit that day, the case quickly looked like a classic hot car tragedy, the kind that claims dozens of young lives each year in Texas heat waves.
Yet during a tense news briefing, Sheriff Javier Salazar wasted no time pointing out problems with Islar’s tale. He said deputies arrived to find the kids already inside the home, not out in the vehicle, and other details just did not line up.
“Some inconsistencies with the story that we’re being given,”
Salazar told reporters he felt sure enough to act without waiting for full test results. Investigators noted a prior run-in with child welfare workers for the family, though they kept those details close. The incident is a stark reminder of the importance of child safety and the potential dangers children can face.
By evening, Islar sat behind bars on two felony counts of injury to a child, causing serious harm or death, each carrying a potential life sentence. Judges set her bond at $300,000, and she has not made it out yet. The medical examiner’s office in Bexar County still needs to wrap up autopsies to nail down exactly what killed Miyani and Sevani, whether it was the brutal midday sun baking the car’s interior or something else entirely. For now, detectives comb the quiet street for clues, urging neighbors to check any home cameras or dash cams from midday Saturday. This San Antonio child deaths case has shaken the community, and the investigation continues.
