Mum locked girls in frigid bedroom

A three-year-old girl from Alaska, America's northernmost community died and her younger sister suffered hypothermia after their mother and the mother's boyfriend left them in a locked bedroom with a window open to a temperature of minus 34 deg C to air out the room because the girls wet their beds, authorities said.

The mother, 28-year-old elementary school teacher Esther G. Edwards-Gust, was apparently on the lam on Saturday, a day after she and 29-year-old Richard Tilden Jr. were indicted in the child's death.

Tilden was in custody.

The couple shared a home with Edwards-Gust's one and three-year-old daughters in the Inupiat Eskimo community of Barrow.

Police say the two girls last month were trapped overnight in their bedroom with a window open to temperatures that dropped to 34 deg C below zero.

Both children were diagnosed with extreme hypothermia and flown to an Anchorage hospital, where the three-year-old died.

Source: Agencies