Court records: Mitchell mother said voices in her head told her to kill her children
Mitchell resident Brittany Danielle Medina, 33, walked into the Lawrence County Sheriff’s Office Tuesday afternoon and, according to court documents, told police she had just drowned her 3-year-old boy and her 1-year-old girl.
In an interview, which police said they recorded, Medina said she consumed Xanax, a suboxone strip — a prescription drug to treat opioid addiction — and snorted three lines of cocaine Monday night in her home on West Brook Street. The next morning, she, her children and her boyfriend got up at 6:30 a.m. Her boyfriend went to work in Bloomington, and Medina made breakfast and put on a cartoon for the kids.
According to court records, Medina told police that voices in her head told her at about 2:30 p.m. that “she needed to send her children to heaven today or there will be someone come and take her two children and her and place them in a dark hole.” She also told police that the voices told her “people would torture all three until the end of their lives if she didn’t send the children to heaven today.”
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Medina told police she went to the bathroom closest to the main bedroom and filled the bathtub with water. She took both children into the bathroom, told them she loved them and gave them kisses. Then, according to a probable cause affidavit, the mother “submerged both children simultaneously underneath the water by holding them both around their necks until (the boy) no longer had a pulse and both quit moving.”
Medina said she got out of the bathtub, went to her bedroom and put on dry clothes. She went back into the bathroom and saw both children lying in the bathtub, not moving. According to court documents, she told police the water was completely still.
Medina told police she then got into her vehicle and drove to the sheriff’s department. Court records show that after telling police what she had done at about 4 p.m., Medina gave Lawrence County Detective Michael Ramos a key to her home.
About 20 minutes later, police officers entered the home, about a block east of Mitchell City Cemetery and a block south of Mitchell First Church of God. In the bathroom attached to the home’s main bedroom, Ramos and Mitchell Police Officer Steven Britten found the children’s bodies.
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Police backed out of the home at about 4:25 p.m., put up crime scene tape and contacted the Lawrence County Coroner’s office. After Indiana State Police processed the crime scene, personnel with the coroner's office removed the bodies at 10:37 p.m.
Medina was arrested on two preliminary counts of murder and booked into Lawrence County Jail, where she was being held without bond. Indiana State Police Detective Timothy Cummins requested that Medina face an additional two charges of neglect of a dependent child causing death.
Boris Ladwig can be reached at bladwig@heraldt.com.
This article originally appeared on The Herald-Times: Mitchell mother charged with murder after drowning 2 children
