A mum has been jailed after she left her two children to die in a hot car.
Kerri-Ann Conley, 30, pleaded guilty to two counts of manslaughter this week following the disturbing deaths of one-year-old Chloe-Ann and two-year-old Darcey-Helen Conley in November 2019.
The tragic pair were found dead in a parked car in Queensland, Australia just 10 days after their mum was deemed suitable to look after them by a child safety inspector.
Australian news channel 9News reported she had been taking the drug methamphetamine at the time of the incident.
Darcey had been seen running around the family home with a cannabis bong in her mouth earlier the same month, according to a child safety report.
She was taken to hospital following the incident, where doctors described her as “underweight, pale and suffering from diarrhoea".
Conley also admitted to the Department of Child Safety that she had attempted to sell her then-unborn child for an iPhone 7 in June 2018, while another report found she had refused on numerous occasions to comply with mandatory drugs testing,.
She was discovered to have been selling and using meth from the family home in November 2019 following a report made to police, but was declared a "parent willing and able" in a child safety review held just a few days later.
The two girls were found dead in the vehicle later the same month.
Conley claimed she taken them in her car to a friend's place at 11.30pm on the night of the incident, but left them in the car when she returned home at 4am because she did not want to wake them up. She then went inside to sleep herself.
The mum emerged from the home later the same day, when she discovered Chloe-Ann and Darcey-Helen had died. Temperatures inside the vehicle are reported to have reached 61.5C by 10.30am.
Evidence presented in court this week showed she had still been on her phone inside the house at 5.55am when the sun had already risen almost an hour before. The car was left in direct sunlight with no windows open.
Justice Peter Applegarth said Conley, from the town of Logan, had shown "gross criminal neglect", adding in his comments: "They were uncared for, unheard and unobserved in the dark.
"The sun had risen by 5am and did you check if the children were crying or upset? No, you did not. You were on your phone until 5.55am."
Conley was sentenced to nine years in jail but could potentially be on parole as soon as next year with time served.
The girls' father Peter Jackson hit out at the court following the sentence, saying: “I still think it should be murder. She should have got the 30 years.
“I don't think it's fair – these were defenceless children.”
