The 4 adopted YENGLIN Children - Waterford/ Detroit MI

"She was allowed unsupervised visits only during the day," he said.
So why didn't foster-care authorities respond quickly when the children
weren't back on time?Was she a cold-blooded killer or overwhelmed mom?

Was she a child abuser who nearly became a child killer, luring her children toward death with drug-laced milkshakes?Or
was Shanda Lou Yenglin a deeply religious single mother who, feeling
she had nowhere to turn, killed herself and hoped her four adopted
children would join her in the afterlife?Those
are two descriptions of the 37-year-old Waterford mother surfacing from
a bizarre case that unfolded during the weekend and ended tragically
Monday morning on a quiet street in Oakland County.Authorities
said Yenglin had a history of child abuse and that she tried to kill
her four adopted children in the course of committing suicide Monday in
the garage of the family's home near Williams Lake.According
to Waterford police, none of the children was even supposed to be
spending the night with Yenglin. She lost custody in May 2010, with the
two girls going to live with a foster parent and the boys placed in a
state facility, Sgt. Scott Good said. Yenglin was allowed unsupervised
daily visits but left messages with the children's custodians at 8 p.m.
Saturday that she could not return them because of inclement weather,
Good said. Oakland County Family Court Deputy Administrator Lisa Langton
said Tuesday that a neglect petition had been filed against Yenglin
last year but could not give details.Her
children narrowly survived the carbon monoxide poisoning that killed
her, police said. Waterford police said Tuesday that Yenglin gave the
children "sleeping or pain type medication" Sunday night, apparently to
make them more docile in her attempt to kill them. Police found the home
thermostat at 53 degrees and the house cold, part of an apparent ruse
to keep the children with her to stay warm in their 1998 Chevrolet van
as its engine filled their closed garage with deadly fumes. Police would
not release the contents of the suicide note she left on the van's
dashboard.
On Monday morning, the 13-year-old girl woke up in the van to find
her mother unconscious on the garage floor. She then ran into the house
to alert the sleeping 14-year-old girl -- who had not followed her
mother into the garage -- who then called the police, Good said.When
police and firefighters arrived about 8:30 a.m. Monday, Yenglin's body
was there and the van was still running, Waterford Police Chief Dan
McCaw said.Her
10-year-old son was found unresponsive in the back of the van; her
11-year-old son was in a bedroom and also unresponsive. The 13- and
14-year-old daughters were wandering inside the home, disoriented, McCaw
said.All four
suffered serious carbon monoxide poisoning, with the two boys showing
life-threatening symptoms. All are doing well, and only the boys were
hospitalized Tuesday night, police said."We
have this up for domestic violence review," Oakland County Medical
Examiner Dr. L.J. Dragovic said. "We hear that the children are out of
danger, but this could have been a far greater tragedy," Dragovic said,
shortly after he declared the mother's death a suicide.But
Orlando Blanco of Bloomfield Hills -- a Troy attorney who said he and
his wife have known Yenglin for 17 years -- said that he was upset by
Dragovic's statements. He said Yenglin was "a very caring mother who did
everything she could for those kids."Yenglin raised foster children before adopting the four children, Blanco said."I
think she ran out of resources and felt she had nowhere to turn. She'd
been through a very difficult bout with cancer," he said. Yenglin was
religious, and "maybe she thought the children would see her in the
afterlife," he said.Blanco
shared an e-mail with the Free Press that Yenglin sent to him and
others in 2009 recounting her struggles as an adoptive parent and
requesting the prayers of her friends."I feel like I am going to have a mental breakdown over all of this," she wrote.Blanco said that before Yenglin adopted, he and his wife hired her to care for their children for two years."The notion that she was beating them or abusive to them, I never saw any evidence of that," he said.

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