A three-year-old Alaska girl died and her younger sister suffered from hypothermia after their mother and her boyfriend locked them inside a bedroom whose temperature reached 30 degrees below zero, MSNBC is reporting. The girls were locked inside as a punishment for wetting their beds, authorities are saying.

The girls’ mother, 28-year-old elementary school teacher Esther G. Edwards-Gus, was reportedly on the run after she and her boyfriend, 29-year-old Richard Tilden Jr., were indicted. Tilden was brought into custody, after the indictment was served on March 2, 2012.

Edwards-Gust and Tilden lived with her two daughters in Barrow’s Inupiat Eskimo community. The two girls were diagnosed with extreme hypothermia and flown to an Anchorage hospital, where the three-year-old died, after being trapped in the bedroom the month before.

Tilden told authorities that he had been drinking the night before the incident. He opened the bedroom window to air out the room after the girls wet their beds. He added that the door’s latch was broken, therefore preventing the girls from opening the door from inside the room.

Edwards-Gust and Tilden were charged on several counts, including manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide. Tilden, who called 911 after he discovered the three-year-old wasn’t breathing on February 2, was also charged with second-degree murder and assault.

Written by: Karen Benardello