O'Brien pleads guilty

A Kalispell woman who left her 2- and 3-year-old girls home alone for more than nine hours in squalid conditions pleaded guilty in Flathead County District Court on Thursday to two counts of criminal endangerment.

Prosecutors recommend that Rachel Marie O'Brien, 24, be sentenced to a 10-year prison term with five years suspended.

The sentencing hearing is scheduled for Oct.11.

Pursuant to her plea bargain, O'Brien, 24, also pleaded guilty to felony theft charges stemming from a 2006 case in which she was indicted for stealing jewelry while employed as a housekeeper.

Her guilty pleas also effectively revoked her probation on a 2004 conviction for writing bad checks. She received a five-year deferred sentence on those charges.

O'Brien sobbed most of the way through her testimony, expressing remorse for the way she left her children that day and sorrow at the fact that she will miss Christmas, birthdays, and first days of school for her children for the next few years.

"I wasn't thinking clearly at all, and I didn't weigh out the consequences," she said.

O'Brien testified that she only left her children because a baby sitter never showed up, and she didn't return immediately after work because she got a flat tire and had to take the car into the shop.

O'Brien was at work that day from about 11 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., time cards show. Police rescued her children at about 8:30 p.m.

When asked if she wanted to be a part of her children's lives, O'Brien replied, "I desperately do."

O'Brien has been in jail since Sept. 6 when she was arrested because the criminal endangerment charges violated the terms of her release on the theft charges.

She is being held at the Flathead County Detention Center in lieu of $20,000 bail.

O'Brien originally was arrested Aug. 20 on a $50,000 warrant for two counts of criminal endangerment for neglecting her children, but was released that same day after an initial hearing in Justice Court.

O'Brien was charged with criminal endangerment after a concerned neighbor noticed the children home alone and called police. When officers entered O'Brien's Liberty Street apartment on Aug. 4, they found half-eaten food spilled all over the floor, a piece of toilet paper with feces on it lying in the middle of the room, and a knife balanced within the children's reach.

Dirty diapers, soiled laundry and rotting food also were found in the apartment.

The children were turned over to the Montana Department of Child and Family Services.

Reporter Nicholas Ledden can be reached at 758-4441 or by e-mail at nledden@dailyinterlake.com