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Texas Woman Arrested in Alleged Attempt to Resurrect Dead Toddler

A Texas woman has been charged in an investigation of a church involving what police said appeared to be an attempt to raise a child from the dead.
IMAGE: Congregacional Pueblo De Dios in Balch Springs, Texas
Congregacional Pueblo De Dios in Balch Springs, Texas.Balch Springs, Texas, Police Department
/ Source: NBC News

A Texas woman has been charged in an investigation of a Dallas-area church involving what police said appeared to be an attempt to raise a 2-year-old child from the dead, according to court documents.

The woman, Aracely Meza, whom Texas incorporation records list as the secretary of Congregacional Pueblo de Dios in the town of Balch Springs, was charged with injury to a child by omission, police told NBCDFW. The station reported that Meza was not the child's mother.

Read More on NBCDFW: Woman Arrested in Attempt to Resurrect Child: Police

According to a request for a search warrant filed March 26, Balch Springs police got an anonymous tip the same day that a child had died at the church on March 21 or 22 without anybody's having reported it.

A witness described only as someone living at the church building told investigators that a "rising ceremony" was held March 22 "to attempt to resurrect Victim from the dead." When that failed, the child was wrapped in a blanket and "taken back to Mexico," according to the search warrant request.

Congregacional Pueblo De Dios, which was formed in 2007, is affiliated with the Hispanic Conference of the Congregational Holiness Church, a Pentecostal denomination based in Griffin, Georgia. The evangelical denomination was created by a schism in the Pentecostal movement in the 1920s.

The police search warrant request was heavily redacted, and no further details were immediately available. A call to the church's office wasn't answered.