A depressed mother drove her car into a Minnesota lake to drown her two daughters, prosecutors said yesterday – in a ghoulish echo of Susan Smith’s murder of her two children five years ago.
Lisa Patchen, 28, was found wet and shivering on the shore of Lake Latimer Sunday morning – 300 yards from her unconscious daughters, Amber Johnson, 6, and Allysha Johnson, 7.
Amber was declared dead at the scene, but Allysha survived and was listed in critical condition at a hospital yesterday.
Patchen had been suicidal after she stopped taking anti-psychotic medication a month ago, said Philip Johnson, her longtime boyfriend and the girls’ father.
The tragedy occurred one day before the fifth anniversary of the October 1994 drowning of Smith’s two children in a South Carolina lake.