Suicidal mother tried to kill her kids with drugged milkshakes

BY BILL LAITNER

"She was allowed unsupervised visits only during the day," he said. So why didn't foster-care authorities respond quickly when the children weren't back on time?

Was she a cold-blooded killer or overwhelmed mom?

Was she a child abuser who nearly became a child killer, luring her children toward death with drug-laced milkshakes?

Or was Shanda Lou Yenglin a deeply religious single mother who, feeling she had nowhere to turn, killed herself and hoped her four adopted children would join her in the afterlife?

Those are two descriptions of the 37-year-old Waterford mother surfacing from a bizarre case that unfolded during the weekend and ended tragically Monday morning on a quiet street in Oakland County.

Authorities said Yenglin had a history of child abuse and that she tried to kill her four adopted children in the course of committing suicide Monday in the garage of the family's home near Williams Lake.

According to Waterford police, none of the children was even supposed to be spending the night with Yenglin. She lost custody in May 2010, with the two girls going to live with a foster parent and the boys placed in a state facility, Sgt. Scott Good said. Yenglin was allowed unsupervised daily visits but left messages with the children's custodians at 8 p.m. Saturday that she could not return them because of inclement weather, Good said. Oakland County Family Court Deputy Administrator Lisa Langton said Tuesday that a neglect petition had been filed against Yenglin last year but could not give details.

Her children narrowly survived the carbon monoxide poisoning that killed her, police said. Waterford police said Tuesday that Yenglin gave the children "sleeping or pain type medication" Sunday night, apparently to make them more docile in her attempt to kill them. Police found the home thermostat at 53 degrees and the house cold, part of an apparent ruse to keep the children with her to stay warm in their 1998 Chevrolet van as its engine filled their closed garage with deadly fumes. Police would not release the contents of the suicide note she left on the van's dashboard.

On Monday morning, the 13-year-old girl woke up in the van to find her mother unconscious on the garage floor. She then ran into the house to alert the sleeping 14-year-old girl -- who had not followed her mother into the garage -- who then called the police, Good said.

When police and firefighters arrived about 8:30 a.m. Monday, Yenglin's body was there and the van was still running, Waterford Police Chief Dan McCaw said.

Her 10-year-old son was found unresponsive in the back of the van; her 11-year-old son was in a bedroom and also unresponsive. The 13- and 14-year-old daughters were wandering inside the home, disoriented, McCaw said.

All four suffered serious carbon monoxide poisoning, with the two boys showing life-threatening symptoms. All are doing well, and only the boys were hospitalized Tuesday night, police said.

"We have this up for domestic violence review," Oakland County Medical Examiner Dr. L.J. Dragovic said. "We hear that the children are out of danger, but this could have been a far greater tragedy," Dragovic said, shortly after he declared the mother's death a suicide.

But Orlando Blanco of Bloomfield Hills -- a Troy attorney who said he and his wife have known Yenglin for 17 years -- said that he was upset by Dragovic's statements. He said Yenglin was "a very caring mother who did everything she could for those kids."

Yenglin raised foster children before adopting the four children, Blanco said.

"I think she ran out of resources and felt she had nowhere to turn. She'd been through a very difficult bout with cancer," he said. Yenglin was religious, and "maybe she thought the children would see her in the afterlife," he said.

Blanco shared an e-mail with the Free Press that Yenglin sent to him and others in 2009 recounting her struggles as an adoptive parent and requesting the prayers of her friends.

"I feel like I am going to have a mental breakdown over all of this," she wrote.

Blanco said that before Yenglin adopted, he and his wife hired her to care for their children for two years.

"The notion that she was beating them or abusive to them, I never saw any evidence of that," he said.