PITTSBURGH, Pa. — A Berkeley County woman will be sentenced in December for drowning her 2-year-old son in a hotel bathtub near Pittsburgh last year.
Sharon Flanagan, 34, of Inwood, will likely spend the rest of her life in prison without parole following her conviction Friday in Allegheny County on a first-degree murder charge.
Her son, Steven, was found unresponsive in a bathtub at the Best Western in Green Tree on July 1, 2012. He died five days later at a Pittsburgh hospital.
Flanagan originally claimed it was an accidental drowning that happened when the boy got stuck in the bathtub the night before she planned to take him Sandcastle, a nearby water park.
During her trial, though, prosecutors claimed Flanagan killed the boy because she was mad her husband had been granted more than half of the custody rights for Steven during their divorce.
In the days before the boy’s death, investigators said computer records showed Flanagan searched for “leading cause of toddler death” and topics related to Casey Anthony on the computer at her Inwood home.