A Maryland woman will spend more than four decades years in prison for killing her two young children.
Sonya Spoon, of Cheverly, was arrested Sept. 7, 2014, after admitting to police that she suffocated her children, 1-year-old Ayden Spoon and 3-year-old Kayla Thompson.
Sonya Spoon was sentenced Wednesday to 45 years in prison. She had pleaded guilty in March.
"Knowing my children died by my own hands first seemed like a nightmare. I'm truly sorry for taking their lives," Spoon said during her sentencing hearing.
A family member found the children unresponsive in the Cheverly home. Bags had been placed over the children's heads and secured with duct tape, police said.
Both children were taken to Children's National Medical Center, where they died.
"The saddest aspect of this case is that these two babies in this case, Ayden and Kayla, 1 and 3 years old, never had a chance," Prince George's County State's Attorney Angela Alsobrooks said outside a courthouse Wednesday.
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Spoon, then 24, was arrested at the scene and admitted to suffocating the children, Prince George's County police said.
Just six days before the killings, Spoon had received a mental evaluation after her mother called Cheverly police and told them she was worried because Spoon was threatening to kill Kayla and herself.
Following the evaluation, Spoon was released and allowed back home with her two children. Cheverly Police say they did all they could do, legally.
"Nobody helped. Nobody reached out to anybody. Nobody reached out to anybody to help. They just let her out two days later to kill my daughter and her brother," Lester Thompson, Kayla's father, said earlier this year.
"Our client Sonya Spoon was failed by the mental health system," Spoon's attorney Mirriam Seddiq said Wednesday. "We know this tragedy could have been avoided if proper mental health treatment had been provided to Ms. Spoon."
CORRECTION (Wednesday June 7, 2017, 1:13 p.m. ET): An earlier version of this story erroneously reported Spoon was sentenced to 22 years in prison. Spoon was sentenced to 45 years in prison Wednesday.
