A Texas woman will spend 40 years of her life inside a prison after she left her two young children to die last year in a hot car, according to Hill County Breaking News.
As CrimeOnline previously reported, Brynn Hawkins, 1, and Addyson Overgard-Eddy, 2, died in 2017 at University Hospital in San Antonio, of heat stroke, after their mother, 20-year-old Amanda Hawkins, left them inside a locked car intentionally.
According to Kerr County Sheriff Hierholzer, both children were locked in the car overnight on June 7, 2017, and left there throughout the next morning, when temperatures in South Texas soared to 92 degrees outside. Hawkins ignored the children crying while she partied with a teen boy, identified as Kevin Frank, throughout the night.
Frank, 16 at the time, went to the car to sleep for a while, ignoring the two little girls in the back seat. At that point, the air conditioner was running in the car as Frank didn’t want to sleep in the hot shed where he previously smoked marijuana and “partied” with Hawkins. The following morning, he woke up, turned the car engine off, rolled up the windows, and left, leaving the babies inside the care.
Frank, now 18, is facing charges of manslaughter, two counts of child endangerment and two counts of injury to a child. His trial is scheduled for January.
Instead, Hawking took the toddlers inside and ran cold water over them, while searching the Internet on ways to revive them. When that didn’t work, she ultimately took the girls, both gravely ill at the point, to the hospital two hours later.
According to testimony, several other teen boys, ages 15, 16, and 17, were with Hawkins as she tried to revive the girls. They all told her told to take the kids to the hospital. After she eventually dropped them off at the hospital, she decided to go stay in a hotel, since it was “more comfortable” than a hospital.
As doctors worked frantically to save the girls’ lives, Hawkins stayed at the hotel, sending text messages to family, stating she took the girls to Seaworld in San Antonio.
At first, Hawkins told police the girls were at Flat Rock Park when both fainted from the outdoor heat. Eventually authorities determined the true story. Had Hawkins taken the girls in for medical treatment earlier, they may have made it.
Hawkins pleaded guilty in September to charges of endangering a child and charges of injury to a child.
“Those precious little girls would still be here today if this had not happened,” the judge said during sentencing.
[Feature Photo: Brynn Hawkins and Addyson Overgard-Eddy/Police Handout]
