Second Boy Dies a Week After Mom’s Drowning Attempt, Family Says

Zachary Stieber
By Zachary Stieber
July 8, 2019US News
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Second Boy Dies a Week After Mom’s Drowning Attempt, Family Says
Jackson Telnas and Jacob Ray Telnas, middle, with their father Jacob Telnas and grandmother in a file photograph. (Support for the Telnas family/GoFundMe)

The second son of a woman who allegedly tried drowning her children has passed away, his family said.

The Tulare County Sheriff’s Office said that Sherri Telnas, 45, took her two sons to a cornfield near their home on June 30 and responding officers found them unresponsive in a nearby irrigation ditch.

Jackson Telnas, 12, was soon pronounced dead, but Jacob Ray Jr., 7, survived. However, the younger son has now passed away, family members said a week after the incident.

“It is with a very heavy heart that we tell yall that Jacob Ray has passed on to join his brother Jackson,” said relative Ellie Brown on a GoFundMe fundraising page late July 7.

“At this time we are still in need of assistance for travel costs & missing income from time off work during this horrible time for our family,” she added.

Sherri Telnas
Sherri Telnas. (Tulare County Sheriff’s Department)

Grandmother Diana Keeland said that family members surrounded Jacob Ray Jr. at the Valley Children’s Hospital when he passed away after being taken off life support.

“They had an hour with Jacob Ray to love up on him, Jacob got a chance to spend time with him and tell him how much he loves him,” Keeland told ABC.

She said that Jackson and Jacob loved spending time with each other. Now, she said she’s concerned about her own son in the wake of his sons’ deaths.

“I’m worried about my son and how he’s going to deal with the loss of his two children and at the hand of their mother that makes it 10 times worse,” Keeland said.

A preliminary hearing for Sherri Telnas is scheduled for Aug. 15 while an autopsy for Jacob Ray Jr. is planned. A statement of probable cause for the charges against Telnas stated she “said she drowned both her kids because they were possessed by demons.”

NTD Photo
Jackson and Jacob Ray Telnas in a file photo with their grandmother. (Support for the Telnas family/GoFundMe)

Attempted Drowning a Decade Ago

According to a 2009 article by the Missoulian, Telnas had tried drowning her child the previous year. Telnas was “in the throes of mental illness” when she attempted to kill her son, who was 10 months old at the time, Mineral County Attorney Shaun Donovan said.

Telnas later took the child to a nearby hospital. When police officers arrived, she told them, “I tried to drown my baby.”

Telnas was sentenced to 20 years in the custody of the Department of Public Health and Human Services, the Missoulian reported.

Documents from 2008 sent to Your Central Valley showed that Telnas told officers that “bad thoughts and voices” had urged her to kill her child. She said she regretted trying to kill the boy and took him out of the water before it was too late, performed CPR, and took him to a hospital.

Despite the 20-year sentence, Telnas was released from the department’s custody in November 2016.

She was also released from probation in 2014 per a recommendation from her Montana parole officer. He wrote that her 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 showed.

District Judge Ed McLean gave her custody of her elder son in late 2010 after she got divorced, saying she’d been doing well in treatment and her psychiatrist had no concerns about her ability as a parent. She gave birth to the other son in 2012.

“We are aware of the Montana incident,” Ashley Ritchie, spokeswoman for the Tulare County Sheriff’s Office, told the Visalia Times-Delta. “We are working with multiple agencies to confirm the details.”

Telnas faces murder charges.

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