Mum jailed after drowning daughter, 2, as punishment because she wet herself

A 28-year-old mother has been jailed after she drowned her toddler while ‘disciplining’ her for wetting her bed.

Lin Li, 28, from Brooklyn, New York, held her two-year-old girl’s head under water in a storage bin until she drowned.

She has been convicted of her daughter Melody Zheng’s manslaughter, but was acquitted of second-degree murder following a trial last June.

A jury also found Li guilty of first-degree attempted assault for holding her four-year-old son’s head under water the day before she drowned Melody four years ago.

She was today sentenced to 18 years in prison over the death as the court was told she was a ‘strict mother’ who had used dangerous methods of punishment on her children, the Mail Online reports.

Prosecutors portrayed Li as a strict parent during her trial, telling the jury she had taken Melody into a bathroom at her family’s squalid Sunset Park apartment to discipline the child for wetting herself on March 13, 2016.

While the toddler’s father was asleep, she submerged Melody’s head in a plastic container filled with water, and held her there until she stopped struggling.