WILKES-BARRE -- A jury found a mother guilty of trying to kill her two young children in Luzerne County.
This was the second trial for Melissa Scholl. In June, a jury deadlocked on her case.
Melissa Scholl was silent as she left the Luzerne County Courthouse in Wilkes-Barre a guilty woman.
A jury convicted her on two counts of attempted homicide for trying to kill herself and her two young children with carbon monoxide.
The jury came to that verdict after a week-long trial and three hours of deliberations.
“Obviously we're relieved,” said Luzerne County Assistant District Attorney Sam Sanguedolce. “Unfortunately, it's a terrible situation so to say we're happy about the verdict, we're clearly not. This is a terrible situation for everybody, we feel terrible for the children but this was something that was necessary and we're glad that justice was served.”
It was back in December of 2015 when Scholl hooked up a hose to her car's exhaust pipe and fed it through the car's window with her then 7-year-old son and 5-year-old daughter inside, then got inside the car herself.
It happened in a school bus parking lot in Wilkes-Barre Township.
She was stopped when a bus driver noticed the hose sticking out of the car.
This is the second time the prosecution put Scholl on trial.
Her first trial in June ended with a hung jury.
“When it was clear to us what actually happened and have the jury come back hung the first time, it was important for us to get justice for those children,” said Sanguedolce.
As in her first trial Scholl did not testify in her own defense.
Her attorneys argued this suicide attempt was a cry for help, saying Scholl texted her mother that she wanted to kill herself.
Prosecutors said it couldn't have been a cry for help since Scholl never texted her mother where she was.
Mark Wallace was a juror on this trial.
“We had come to the thought process that there wasn`t a cry for help in a sense, that some of the facts feel through in the fact there was supposed to be some people picking her up and things like that,” said Wallace.
Melissa Scholl is expected to be sentenced sometime in late November.
She faces 13 to 26 years in prison.