MAHANOY CITY -- Police believe a woman in Schuylkill County who was supposed to be caring for her grandchildren was starving one and killed the other.
Mahanoy City police have been investigating this case for about a month. They arrested that grandmother and charged her with criminal homicide on Friday.
Pietrina Hoffman, 52, walked out of a district magistrate's office in Shenandoah in tears on Friday after being charged with killing her granddaughter, one-year-old Navaeh Doyle.
"I didn't do nothing. I don't know. I don't remember. Can we just go?" Hoffman said.
"You said the two year old stepped on her. Did that really happen?"
"I don't know!"
Doyle died in January while at Hoffman's home on West Centre Street in Mahanoy City.
Hoffman was taking care of the one year old and a two-year-old granddaughter.
"I've been with her since the day this happened. She honestly--I believe her. She doesn't remember. I don't know if she blacked out. I don't know," said Kathy Haage.
Haage is a family friend and came to Hoffman's arraignment in shock she was charged with criminal homicide.
"What does the family believe happened to this one-year-old baby?"
"We have been trying to figure that out for a month."
Police say Hoffman suffocated Naveah Doyle on January 10 and left the baby's body on the floor of her home in Mahanoy City for hours before calling 911.
Authorities found the two year old inside the home showing early signs of starvation.
Although Hoffman denies her involvement in the death of the one year old, she admitted in court documents to taking sleeping pills, "blacking out," and realizing the baby was dead early in the morning.
But before she called police, she says she sat down, had a cup of coffee, and phoned her husband.
Hoffman is now locked up in the Schuylkill County jail.
Because she faces a capital murder charge that comes with the possibility of the death penalty, the magistrate did not set bail.