PONTIAC, Michigan (AP) — A Michigan mother and her two children were found frozen to death over the weekend after the mother experienced a “mental health crisis,” county sheriffs say. said on Monday.
Monica Canady, 35, “believed someone was trying to kill her” before she and her children died, Oakland County Sheriff Michael Bouchard said at a news conference Monday. rice field.
Authorities found the 9- and 3-year-old sons and their mother on Sunday in the woodlands of Pontiac, about 20 miles northwest of Detroit.
Investigators also found a 10-year-old girl and took her to a local hospital. The girl knocked on the door and she said, “Her family was dead in the fields,” Bouchard said.
Bouchard said her family tried to help her before she left with her children, but she refused. When her family arrived in the forest, Canady told her children to lie down and sleep. Two sons and their mother died of hypothermia, according to her autopsy report.
At a press conference on Monday, Bouchard advocated for better mental health support and said “a lot more work needs to be done” when it comes to crisis response and long-term solutions.
“It takes strength to ask for help. It’s not weakness,” he said. “It’s encouraging.”
