A mother undergoing a paranoid episode froze to death with two of her young children in a field in Michigan. A third child managed to get away and alerted police.
The 10-year-old girl went for help and knocked on the door of a house near the field. Police were notified and found her mother and the two boys dead.
Michael Bouchard, Oakland County Sheriff, identified the deceased as Monica Cannady, 35, and her two boys, Kyle and Malik Milton, nine and three. They were discovered on Sunday, January 22, in Pontiac, Michigan. Autopsies revealed that they died from hypothermia.
Cannady’s 10-year-old daughter woke up and ran to a house after she discovered her unresponsive mother and brothers. She told the resident that her family had frozen to death in a nearby field. The girl was brought to a hospital and was treated for hypothermia.
Sheriff Bouchard said Cannady was living with her three children in an apartment but she believed someone was trying to kill her. She fled her apartment with her children sometime last week. Three weeks earlier, relatives noticed her paranoid behavior and tried to help her, but they were unable to change her mood or behavior.
Cannady and her children were witnessed knocking on people’s doors on Saturday asking for food. She went into the field with her children after refusing money from people trying to assist her.
Sheriff Bouchard said his office had received calls from residents about the family’s situation, but they had been unable to find the family. Cannady had instructed the children to hide if they saw or heard anyone trying to approach them.
Sheriff Bouchard said that the family at first was hiding in an abandoned car, but the mom took the children to the field, where they died while sleeping, with the exception of the 10-year-old girl.
Cannady’s brother, Andre Harsten, said he had been looking for his sister the entire weekend.
