CHEVY CHASE, Md. — After a court-ordered mental health evaluation, the mother who police say confessed to drowning her infant daughter has been found incompetent to stand trial.
Mackenzie Colgan, 37, was arrested Dec. 8 after her 3-month-old daughter died while she was giving her a bath. During an interview after her arrest, investigators say she told police she had woken that morning with a plan to “end everything.”
Colgan told family members she was going to bathe the infant, court documents say, but about 20 minutes later, she returned downstairs and told her husband that the child was dead. He rushed upstairs, discovered the 3-month-old still in the bathtub, attempted CPR and called 911.
Authorities responded to the report of a pediatric drowning at a home on the 7300 block of Summit Avenue in Chevy Chase just after noon, according to probable cause documents. There, they found the unresponsive infant in an upstairs bathroom. She was transported to a nearby hospital, where she was pronounced dead.
While in custody, police say Colgan confessed to holding the infant’s head underwater to kill her and revealed to investigators that she had planned that morning to kill not just her youngest daughter, but also her husband and older child. She had planned on jumping out a second-story window after drowning her daughter, she told investigators, but decided not to after climbing out onto the ledge of the bedroom window.
She'll now be remanded to the Department of Health where officials say she'll stay ─ likely for several months. There will be another status hearing in a few months to see how she's doing to see if she can stand trial.