A 24-year-old mother was arrested in connection with the deaths of her two children, who she said locked themselves in a hot car in Weatherford last month.

Cynthia Marie Randolph has been charged with two first-degree felony counts of injury to a child causing serious bodily injury after admitting to investigators that she left her children in the car to teach her daughter a lesson.

The incident happened May 26, when authorities were called 4 p.m. to Randolph’s home in the 200 block of Rambling Loop, where she reported finding the two children, a 16-month-old boy and a 2-year-old girl, who were both unresponsive inside her 2010 Honda Crosstour parked in her driveway.

Parker County sheriff’s investigators say the temperature had hit 96 degrees in the area, just west of Lake Weatherford.

Randolph “created several variations of the events which led to the death of her children,” which then led to her arrest, the sheriff’s department said.

According to investigations, the mother found the children playing inside the car and ordered her daughter out of the car saying “Stop your s–t,” but when the 2-year-old refused to come out of the vehicle, she said she shut the door to teach her daughter a “lesson,” thinking “she could get herself and her brother out of the car when ready.”

It was only after her nap that Randolph found her children unresponsive inside the Honda Crosstour, police said. Randolph further told investigators that she broke the car window so that it would look like an accident, police said.

“The defendant went inside the house, smoked marijuana and took a nap. The defendant said she was asleep for two or three hours.”, an affidavit stated.

Medics pronounced both children dead at the scene, authorities said.

Randolph has been booked into the Parker Country Jail. Bail has not yet been set.

Source: Independent UK