NEW CHAPEL HILL (KYTX) - The small community of New Chapel Hill remembers the chaos in town when news spread about Deanna Laney killing her children.
People in that community are now telling CBS 19 how they feel about Laney's recent release from the Kerrville State Hospital.
Neva Copeland has lived in her New Chapel Hill home for more than 20 years. That house is two doors down from where Deanna Laney used a large stone to kill two of her sons, and injure the third.
"They're really nice people," Copeland says about the Laney family. "Really nice neighbors and I can't believe it happened in the first place."
Copeland remembers the day it happened, and says Laney could not have been mentally stable.
"I think a mother would have to be insane to kill her children," she says.
Laney's release from the Kerrville State Hospital has Copeland a little concerned.
"If that's the law, that's the law," Copeland says, "but who's to say she won't quit taking her meds? I don't know."
Other neighbors who knew Deanna Laney agree that she must have been mentally ill.
BC 09:02:41:28 It's terrible," neighbor Billy Copeland says. However, he doesn't think it's wrong that Laney has been released from the hospital.
"I don't hold judgment against her, no."
He doesn't believe she's a threat to society.
"I think she's realized what she has done, and I'm sure that's hard for her to come by but she's got to live with it," he says.
People who knew Deanna Laney back in 2003 tell me she spent most of her time at her church, the First Assembly of God in Tyler. She and her sister sang, her mother played the piano, and her brother in law was the pastor.
Days after killing her children, Laney explains on video, that she thought she received signs from God.
"She said God told her to do it," Neva said.
In one video, she refers to a time when her youngest son Aaron picked up a toy spear.
"I had this feeling that it was going to be me, killing my family with a spear," Laney said.
After Laney was declared insane and acquitted of murder charges in 2004, Neva Copeland thought Laney would be hospitalized for good.
"She would be in some kind of a home where they can keep an eye on her, for her safety too," she says.
News of her release brings back a spectrum of emotions.
"I mean, really, you can't imagine it," Neva Copeland says.
They're emotions that a small, tight knit community never thought would be rehashed.
No one was at Laney's New Chapel Hill home Friday. there's no word on where Deanna Laney will be now that she's been released from the hospital.
Only a handful of people including Deanna Laney's attorney know where she is.
