WETASKIWIN, Alta.- A psychiatrist says a woman who has admitted to drowning her two young sons likely doesn't remember doing it because she took about 30 sleeping pills.
Dr. Alberto Choy, a forensic psychiatrist at Alberta Hospital in Edmonton, has been treating Allyson McConnell since shortly after the boys' deaths in February 2010.
He says McConnell has a long history of shutting down her memory and emotions of things too painful to remember since she was impregnated by her father when she was 15.
Choy told a court in Wetaskiwin he doesn't believe the 33-year-old McConnell is deliberately hiding any information or memories from anyone.
McConnell has testified she doesn't remember killing them in the tub of their home in Millet, south of Edmonton, and believed that 2 1/2-year-old Connor and 10-month-old Jayden were still alive days after they were already dead.
She is charged with second-degree murder, but has pleaded not guilty to the charges.
