People across the country and the world are calling for 19-year-old Amanda Hawkins to be imprisoned for life.
An online petition titled "Make Sure Amanda Hawkins goes to Prison" has gained more than 1,600 signatures as of Tuesday night. Hawkins is accused of leaving her two girls inside a car overnight for 15 hours on June 6. Her two daughters, 1-year-old Brynn Hawkins and 3-year-old Addyson Overgard-Eddy, died on Thursday evening.
Kerr County Sheriff Rusty Hierholzer said that the 19-year-old feared getting into trouble, bathed the todders, and waited to take them to a hospital. Sheriff Hierholzer also said that Hawkins lied to hospital personnel by saying that the girls had been at Flat Rock Lake and collapsed as they were getting ready to leave.
Hawkins was transported from the Bexar County jail to the Kerr County jail on Monday night. She's charged with two counts of endangering a child.
Sierra Talley, a childhood friend of Hawkins, said that she started the petition to share the tragedy and send a message.
"I'm really hoping, with the amount of signatures that I am getting, that it'll at least change their minds, the jury or somewhere in the courtroom, so that they realize what she did was really wrong," Talley said. "She's been a very close friend for a while, and I knew her kids personally too. It broke my heart and I couldn't believe she would let anything like that happen."
Talley says that she's received personal messages from people who are outraged at Hawkins.
"I've had people from Chicago, Germany, all sorts of places, all over the world message me about it," Talley noted. "Everybody I've talked to says she should actually not be alive."
Sheriff Hierholzer believes that the temperature in the car played a role in the death of the girls but the medical examiner's office has yet to release the exact cause. The toddlers’ bodies are at the Grimes Funeral Chapels in Kerrville.
The sheriff said charges could be upgraded because the girls have died.