From police lobby telephone, Irving mother reports she smothered her two little girls
The eldest girl was in the master bedroom. Her younger sister was in the spare.
After she killed her daughters by preventing them from breathing, Madison McDonald tucked them in their beds, she told authorities.
The account of the killings of the 6-year-old and 1-year-old girls on Monday in an apartment in Irving where they lived together is described in a probable cause affidavit supporting McDonald’s arrest on suspicion of two counts of capital murder of a person under 10 years of age.
After life had slipped from her girls’ bodies, McDonald, 30, left the apartment and locked the door behind her. A bit after 10 p.m., she arrived at Irving police headquarters to report the crimes over a lobby telephone, police said.
McDonald calmly told a 911 operator that she had smothered 1-year-old Lillian Mae McDonald and 6-year-old Archer Hammond.
McDonald told the operator that she had also sedated the children, according to the affidavit.
Once an officer arrived in the lobby, McDonald began talking about “how her kids were being abused and that she would do anything to protect her children including ‘eliminating them,’” according to the affidavit. Nothing more about the abuse is described in the document.
Police and fire department personnel went to the apartment, in the 700 block of Cowboys Parkway, and forced their way inside. They confirmed the little girls were dead.
The Dallas County Medical Examiner Office was to determine the cause of the deaths.
McDonald was being held without bail on Tuesday in the Irving City Jail.
No one beyond McDonald and the girls lived at their unit in the Anthem Apartments, and no one else was present at the time the girls were slain, said Officer Robert Reeves, an Irving police spokesman.
Police had previously been called to McDonald’s apartment. Reeves declined to release the nature, number and disposition of the calls.
This story was originally published April 6, 2021 at 1:39 PM.
