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Mother Killed 2 Children, Police Say

17 August 2010 17:23 (UTC +04:00)

Baku-APA. A financially desperate woman in South Carolina has confessed to smothering her two children with her bare hands and driving their bodies into a river, the police said on Tuesday morning, APA reports quoting The New York Times.
The woman, Shaquan Duley, 29, admitted to killing her 2-year-old and 18-month-old sons after the police pulled her submerged car from a river in Orangeburg, S.C., and discovered their bodies, according to Larry Williams, the county sheriff.
"The statement was made by the mother that she had suffocated the children," Sheriff Williams said at a press conference. "She was a mother that was unemployed. She had no way of taking care of her children."
Ms. Duley will be formally charged with murder on Wednesday, the police said.
The toddlers were identified on Tuesday by the Orangeburg coroner, Samuetta Marshall, as 18-month-old Jaâ€™van T. Duley and 2-year-old Devean C. Duley.
Ms. Duley also had another child, a 5-year-old, who is now with his grandmother, the police said.
The case has many parallels to the case of Susan Smith, a South Carolina woman who was convicted of drowning her two sons in a car in a lake in Union County in 1994.
Sheriff Williams, of Orangeburg County, said these killings followed a dispute between Ms. Duley and her mother.
"She was fed up with her mother telling her that she couldnâ€™t take care of the children or wasnâ€™t taking care of the children," Sheriff Williams said. "She just wanted to be free."
The police received a call about a submerged car early on Monday. But they quickly grew suspicious of Ms. Duleyâ€™s accounts of the accident, which were inconsistent while she was exhibiting a wide range of emotions. The authorities said that one hint her original story was a lie was that her clothes were dry, although she said she had gone into the river to try to save her sons.
"We felt that the story she was telling us wasnâ€™t factual," Sheriff Williams said.