A 35-year-old Indiana woman, Brittany Medina, could spend the rest of her life in prison for the 2023 killings of her children, 3-year-old Jackson and 1-year-old Madelyn. Medina allegedly told her toddlers that she loved them before she drowned them both.
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According to court documents reviewed by Law & Crime, Medina pleaded guilty but mentally ill to two counts of neglect of a dependent resulting in death. Judge John M. Plummer III will review the plea agreement. Should it be accepted, two counts of murder would be dismissed.
Medina is to be sentenced on October 23. As per WFIU, Medina could potentially serve up to 40 years in prison.
As per the outlet, Brittany Medina arrived at the Lawrence County Jail on September 26, 2023. She told the authorities that she had just killed her children by drowning them in a bathroom.
Authorities arrived at her West Brook Street residence and found Jackson and Madelyn Shelton deceased in the bathroom, just as Medina said. Jackson was undressed, while Madelyn was wearing a “flowered onesie.”
The mother told police that she had taken Xanax and snorted three lines of cocaine the night before the killings.
Mom Drowned Children
With her boyfriend at work, at around 2:30 p.m., Medina claimed she began hearing voices. An affidavit detailed that these voices were instructing her to “send her children to heaven today,” and to “place them in a dark hole.”
Disturbingly, Medina told the authorities that these voices would torture the three of them “until the end of their lives” should she refuse to “send the children to heaven today.”
The woman filled up a bathtub with water and grabbed her children. She told Jackson and Madelyn that she “loved them” and kissed them, as per the affidavit. Moments later, she held them underwater until they drowned.
After putting on dry clothes and making sure that her children were not moving, she turned herself in.
Shortly after their devastating deaths, the community held a prayer vigil. Fox 59 talked with the children’s grandmother, Denise McCormick, who said she was shaken to the core by their passing.
“They were just precious, precious angels,” the grandmother said. “They were just babies. The little one-year-old had a beautiful smile on her face all the time. She was never angry. They were babies.”
While she asked for privacy, she talked about Brittany, her daughter, saying, “She did wrong, she killed my grandkids, but she has a mental illness. We just ask for prayers from everybody.”