Mother Calmly Dials 911 After Trying to Kill Her son

By Niya J. Ward




A Pennsylvania woman was unusually calm when she dialed 911 for assistance. After drowning her 3- year- old son, the woman attempted to kill his older brother in a bathtub. She sat on both boys while they were submerged underwater. Laurel Schlemmer told the dispatcher, "My two sons. I think they've drowned in our bathtub.


According to the Pittsburgh-Post-Gazette the 40 year old mother of two called 911 just minutes after pulling them from the bathtub and removing their clothes. Schlemmer told police she heard voices telling her to hold them under water. The youngest child, Luke, 3, died at the scene. His older brother, Daniel, 6, remains in critical condition.


Schlemmer told police that she pulled the boys — unconscious — from the tub, stripped them and put their wet clothes in a garbage bag, the newspaper reports.
She then went into the study in her two-story home and called 911.
On the tape, Schlemmer is heard in a calm, high voice explaining the drowning incident to the 911 operator, the Post-Gazette reports.
"I, uh, let my 6- and 3-year old sons play in the bathtub a little bit before their bath this morning," she says. "And, uh, I was, and then I went to, to the restroom and, um, took longer than I should have or planned and then I came back. They're unconscious."

Later, the 911 operator, asks, "Are they breathing?"
"It doesn't look like it, sir," she says.
She was arraigned on charges of criminal homicide, attempted criminal homicide, aggravated assault and child endangerment.
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According to her pastor, Dan Hendley, of North Park Church, Schlemmer was involved in an incident 10 months ago in which she backed into the two boys with her van, leaving one of them unable to walk for awhile. One of the boys suffered broken bones and the other received internal injuries, KDKA-TV reports, quoting unnamed sources.


"There was no concern that there was anything but a terrible accident that occurred in that situation," Hendley told the Associated Press.


"We all had sympathy for Michelle," he said. "She thought they had run inside, and in fact they were still behind the van. What really happened there, God knows, but that's the way we were dealing with that at that time."


Court records also show that Schlemmer left a child unattended in a hot car in 2009.
"She's been trying to get rid of those boys for years," said a neighbor.




House in an average neighborhood.