Mom pleads insanity to killing children

MINEOLA, N.Y., Feb. 10 (UPI) -- A New York state woman has been allowed to enter an insanity plea to drowning her three children last year.

Leatrice Brewer will be incarcerated in a secure psychiatric institution, Newsday reported.

At Monday's hearing, Brewer, who also tried to take her own life by ingesting a mixture of substances and by jumping from a second-floor window, admitted that she killed Jewell Ward, 6, Michael Demesyeux, 5, and Innocent Demesyeux, 18 months, in February last year. She pleaded not guilty by reason of mental defect or disease.

"My granddaughter loved her children," Maebell Mickens, the children's great-grandmother, told Newsday. "I feel she's getting ready to get the help she needs."

Social service workers attempted to visit the family two days before the children died but left because no one was home.

The head of the Nassau County prosecutor's major offense bureau, Mitch Benson, told Newsday that Brewer was allowed to enter the insanity plea because she didn't "appreciate the wrongfulness of her conduct" and not because county officials were worried about what might come out in a trial.