A mother from Inwood, West Virginia was found guilty of first-degree murder Friday after she drowned her 2-year-old son in a hotel bathroom last year.
Sharon Flanagan, 34, claimed she put her son, Steven, in the bathtub at a Green Tree hotel bathroom on July 1, 2012. She claimed that she got distracted and then ran into the bathroom to see him lying lifeless in the water.
"When I realize I don't hear him playing anymore, I go in and find him face down in the tub," Flanagan testified, Associated Press reports. "I know I wasn't in there when he needed me, and I'll know that for the rest of my life."
He died five days later at a hospital in Pittsburgh.
Prosecutors became suspicious after realizing that Flanagan had changed her story. She first told them that she was unable to pull Steven out of the bathtub or that his foot got stuck on something. She claimed that she lied in fear of losing custody of her son.
They had also found that she had searched sites about Casey Anthony, leading causes of death for toddlers, suffocation, and CPR on her computer.
Post-Gazette reports that prosecutors believe she committed the crime in spite of her husband, who she was going through a bitter divorce and custody battle with at the time.