A Phoenix woman who says her 2-year-old son fatally shot her 9-year-old son with a handgun that she left on a bed has been sentenced to 10 years in prison for her role in the 2017 killing.
The sentence announced Thursday to Wendy Lavarnia in the death of her son, Landen, marked the most lenient punishment available under the terms of her guilty pleas to manslaughter and attempted child abuse.
She has acknowledged she caused his death by recklessly leaving the gun out where the toddler could grab it while the children played a video game.
Still, authorities who had expressed skepticism about Lavarnia’s account of the shooting and say they were unable to definitively determine who fired the gun.