A Texas judge has sentenced a mom to 40 years in prison for the hot car deaths of her two toddler daughters.
According to the Kerrville Daily Times, Amanda Hawkins, 20, was sentenced Wednesday, about three months after she pleaded guilty to child abandonment and endangerment charges in the June 2017 deaths of her daughters, Brynn Hawkins, 1, and Addyson Overgard-Eddy, 2, in Kerrville.
Authorities said Hawkins left the girls in the car outside a Kerrville home overnight as she socialized and smoked marijuana with friends June 6 to 7, 2017, The Associated Press reported. Outdoor temperatures hit 85 degrees, according to the Daily Times.
Prosecutors said the girls had been in the car about 15 hours when Hawkins retrieved them, bathing them and Googling heat stroke treatments before taking them to a hospital, the Daily Times reported. Hawkins initially told hospital workers that the girls had collapsed while smelling flowers, but her story "wasn't quite adding up," physician Daniel Gebhard said.
Doctors pronounced the girls dead June 8.
“There’s not a day that goes by that I think about what I should have done,” Hawkins said before she was sentenced. “It’s heartbreaking, and it will affect me for the rest of my life.”
– The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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