Charges brought against mother
Tulare County District Attorney Tim Ward announced on Tuesday criminal charges against Sherri Telnas, 45, in the incident resulting in the drowning death of her 12- year-old son and the serious injury of her 7-year-old son.
Telnas is charged with one count of murder with the special circumstance of lying in wait, one count of attempted murder causing great bodily injury, one count of battery, and one count of battery on a peace officer.
On Tuesday afternoon at the Tulare County Pretrial facility Telnas was denied bail and scheduled her arraignment for today at her request.
If convicted on all charges, Telnas faces a maximum sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole or the death penalty.
An autopsy concluded the death of the 12-year was caused by fresh water drowning. As of Monday, the 7-year-old was still in critical condtion.
The incident happened when the 12-year-old and 7-year-old were found unresponsive in a full irrigation ditch near a corn field on Saturday morning in the 18900 block of Avenue 184 in Porterville.
Telnas was released from probation in 2014 after her parole officer in Montana said she didn’t pose any risk to the boy she had tried to drown as a baby in a Montana river.
Telnas’ Montana parole officer recommended in July 2014 conditional release from her supervision, saying Telnas’ discharge from supervision “is in the best interests of the offender and society and will not present unreasonable risk of danger to the victim(s) of this offense,” court documents show.
Telnas was sentenced in 2009 to the custody of Montana health officials for two 10-year sentences running consecutively for trying to drown the then-10-month-old boy. She transferred her supervision to California in 2012, according to court documents.
In her request to a judge, Montana parole officer Gloria Soja wrote that a probation officer in California had reported Telnas had completed drug abuse programs, had no violations and continued to attend all her appointments.
She got custody of her sons in late 2010 as part of her divorce, court records said.
The judge found she was doing well in her treatment with her psychiatrist, was holding down a job and her relationship with her son “appears to be very loving.”
The psychiatrist “had no concern about her ability to parent and testified that he sees no risk factors to indicate that she may de-compensate in her emotional wellness,” District Judge Ed Mclean wrote.
He also noted that the boy’s father, Jacob Telnas, did not fight testimony that he was unemployed, living with friends, smoked marijuana on a daily basis and drank alcohol regularly.
She later reunited with her ex-husband, and their second son was born in 2012, said Ellie Brown, who is married to the boys’ uncle. The couple lived together in California for a time, and Telnas had been alone with the boys for about a year, she said.