Kids die after mum leaves them in hot car to 'teach them a lesson'
A Texas woman has been charged over the death of her two children after she left her two-year-old and 16-month-old in a hot car to 'teach them a lesson'.
Cynthia Marie Randolph, 24, was being held on the weekend on two counts of causing serious bodily injury to a child.
Her children died after they were left inside a car for hours while Randolph napped and smoked marijuana.
According to the criminal complaint, Randolph initially told investigators she was inside her rural home west of Fort Worth folding laundry and watching TV on May 26 while the children, two-year-old Juliet and 16-month-old Cavanaugh were playing on the enclosed back porch.
She said when she noticed they were no longer there, she went looking for them and found them about 30 minutes later locked in the car.
The children were unresponsive and Randolph said she broke a window to gain entry.
Temperatures that day reached above 32 degrees.
At the time Randolph said the kids were exposed to the extreme temperatures in the car for "no more than an hour."
But her account of that day changed over the course of several interviews with investigators until she acknowledged before her arrest that she left them in the car intentionally, the Parker County Sheriff's Office said in a statement.
She told investigators that she found the kids playing in the car and when the two-year-old refused to get out, she shut the door to teach her a lesson, thinking her daughter could get herself and her brother out of the vehicle when ready.
Randolph said she went back into the house, smoked marijuana and took a nap for two or three hours, the complaint states.
It says that when she woke up and went to check on the children, they were unresponsive, and that she broke the car window to support her initial claim that the children had locked themselves inside.
The children were pronounced dead about 30 minutes after authorities were notified, and four hours after they were left in the car.
Authorities declined to discuss the case Saturday.
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