A Pennsylvania woman said she was swept away in the Penobscot River while cleaning trash on Saturday while her 3-year-old daughter died in a hot car in a Milford parking lot.
Kelly Brown, 40, of Havertown, Pennsylvania, was arrested Saturday evening after her daughter, Fiona Brown, was found dead in a car in the Freshies parking lot in Milford.
Brown was charged with manslaughter, a Class A felony. She appeared before District Court Judge Sean Ociepka at the Penobscot Judicial Center Monday afternoon.
An affidavit released Monday afternoon provides the first details of what may have happened before Fiona’s death.
When officers arrived at the Freshies parking lot after 8 p.m. Saturday, they found the body of Brown’s daughter and dog, Penelope, on the driver’s side floorboard, the affidavit said. The daughter had signs of rigor mortis and livor mortis, meaning the child had been dead in the same position for an extended amount of time.
The autopsy results for Fiona Brown were not yet available, according to the affidavit.
Brown returned to the car at 8:30 p.m. She said that she wasn’t at the car because she was cleaning up trash around the Freshies parking lot for the majority of the day. When she went to pick up pieces of trash that had blown down the embankment, she said she slipped and fell into the Penobscot River, according to the affidavit.
Brown told police she was unable to get out of the river because of a riptide and had to swim to the other side.
The car had been parked in the Freshies parking lot since 2 a.m. When police reviewed video footage, officers noted that Brown did not return to the car between 5:56 a.m. and around 8:30 p.m., according to the affidavit.
Police found the car by pinging Brown’s location on her phone after Pennsylvania police asked the Penobscot County Sheriff’s Office to open a missing person file on Saturday. Brown had not been heard from since Aug. 7 while she was supposed to be visiting her grandmother in Clifton.
Brown’s family members called Pennsylvania police to open the missing person file after Brown posted “disturbing” videos to her Facebook account, according to the affidavit. Brown also told her grandmother that she had been hallucinating, hearing voices of shamans and seeing people who weren’t there.
She said the voices were telling her what to do, according to the affidavit.
A district court judge set a $50,000 bail for Brown, with the condition she not interact with any children under the age of 18.
Correction: A previous version of this story misstated the day of the week that Kelly Brown was arrested. It has been updated.
