A US mother whose two young children died in a hot car while she partied inside a shed has been sentenced to 40 years in prison.
Police say that on June 7, 2017 Amanda Hawkins, then 19, drove her one and 2‑year‑old daughters to the hospital. The girls were in dire condition and their mother claimed they'd collapsed after smelling flowers at a nearby lake.
But police quickly determined that flowers weren't the culprit. Instead, the girls' mother intentionally left them in her car overnight while she partied with friends.
The children ‑ Brynn Hawkins, 1, and Addyson Overgard‑Eddy, 2 ‑ were trapped in the car for 15 to 18 hours as temperatures in Hill Country in the US state of Texas reached close to 32 degrees Celcius. That evening, someone heard the girls crying in the car and asked Hawkins to bring them inside. She said no, it's fine. They'll cry themselves to sleep.
Prosecutors said that Hawkins Googled how to revive someone from heat exhaustion while running cold water on the girls in a futile attempt to save them.
[Source : Washington Post]
