Woman Accused of Leaving Kids to Die Put in Halfway House

BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) — A member of South Dakota's Rosebud Sioux tribe who pleaded guilty to leaving her two young daughters to die on the Fort Berthold Reservation in North Dakota is spending her time before sentencing in a halfway house in Mandan.

Michelle Wounded Face will be sentenced Sept. 2 on child abuse and neglect charges to which she pleaded guilty in June. Authorities say Wounded Face last January abandoned her 2- and 4-year-old daughters in a car in a rural area. They survived.

Wounded Face said later she was under the influence of drugs.

Wounded Face made a request to stay with a woman whom she met in a Jamestown jail, but her attorney later withdrew it. The federal public defender's office isn't commenting on the request or why it was withdrawn.

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