Sitter Held in Murder, Mother Flies Home
- Share via
BECKLEY, W.Va. — A soldier who left her children with a sitter when she and her husband were sent to the Persian Gulf has returned because the sitter was charged with murder and says she’ll ask the Army for a discharge.
“I’m not going back to Saudi Arabia,” Pfc. Michelle Lawrence said over the weekend. “If I could stay in (the Army) without leaving my children, I would, but my children are more important to me than the Army.”
Lawrence and her husband, Army Spec. Rodney Lawrence, were stationed at Ft. Hood, Tex., when they were sent to the Middle East in August. They left their three sons with Demerise Ann Smith, 39, of Fairdale, W.Va., the mother-in-law of a soldier they knew.
On Thursday, Smith was arrested on a first-degree murder charge in the 1989 drowning of her husband.
Sign up for Essential California
The most important California stories and recommendations in your inbox every morning.
You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times.
