A former Missisippi police officer admitted in court that she was having sex with her supervisor as her young daughter was dying in an overheated patrol car.

CBS News reports that Cassie Barker, formerly a member of the Long Beach Police Department, pleaded guilty to manslaughter as part of an agreement with prosecutors in the 2016 death of her 3-year-old daughter Cheyenne Hyer.

Hyer was in Barker’s patrol car on September 30 of that year when Barker was in the home of her then-supervisor Clark Lardner for four hours. The air conditioning had been left on, according to the report, but it was not working properly and Barker found the girl unresponsive when she returned to the car.

According to the report, Barker had previously claimed she had fallen asleep inside Lardner’s home, but has since admitted that she had sex with her supervisor before falling asleep. Larnder, who had also fallen asleep, reportedly told authorities he did not know the girl was in the car, and has not been charged in her death.

How do you protect your children from predators? Join Nancy Grace and a team of world class experts for the online course ‘Justice Nation: Crime Stops Here’.

Barker had initially been charged with second-degree murder but the plea agreement came with a reduced charge of manslaughter.

WLOX reports that Harrison County Circuit Judge Larry Bourgeois said in court on Monday that he would deliver a sentence to Barker on April 1, after he had more time to consider the charges and the circumstances. Barker had reportedly left Hyer alone in a car outside a store in 2015, and temporarily lost custody of the girl after child welfare services intervened.

“I don’t know what I could ever do to you that could be worse than what you’ve already experienced …You will forever be entombed in a prison of your own mind,” Bourgeois told Barker on Monday.

[Feature image: Facebook]