GRANITE FALLS – The mother of two infants at the center of a South Dakota homicide investigation went directly to jail today on Minnesota charges related to her pulling a gun during a police interview in the homicide.
Kelly Anderson-Person, 35, of Hendricks, formerly of Clarkfield, is serving consecutive sentences totaling 120 days after pleading guilty today in Yellow Medicine County District Court to a gross misdemeanor charge of child endangerment and a misdemeanor charge of violating an order to have no contact with the child.
District Judge Dwayne Knutsen also sentenced Anderson-Person to serve four years of supervised probation and to pay fines and fees.
Knutsen rejected a defense attorney’s request to delay the start of the sentence - as well as a plea for less time - after Anderson-Person entered the guilty pleas.
Anderson-Person was charged with a gross misdemeanor count of child endangerment for an August 2013 incident at her home. Two officers from South Dakota were at her Clarkfield home to question her in the homicide investigation stemming from the 2012 discovery of the remains of two infants - a boy and girl - in a grove of trees near Fish Lake in Deuel County, S.D.
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As she spoke with the officers, squad cars pulled up outside her home and Anderson-Person pulled a .38-caliber revolver from under the cushion of the sofa where she sat holding her then nine-month-old daughter. The officers wrestled the revolver from her, and it discharged into the ceiling during the struggle.
Anderson-Person is the biological mother of the deceased infants, and she told the officers she had given birth to infants in 2009 and 2011 while living in Hendricks in Lincoln County and had disposed of the bodies, according to court documents.
The two female officers - one from Brookings, S.D., and the other from Sioux Falls, S.D. - attended the sentencing in Granite Falls.
The misdemeanor charge against Anderson-Person of violating a no contact order was for mailing a Valentine’s Day card to her daughter in care of the child’s father at their Clarkfield residence. The girl lives with her father, and he is currently seeking a divorce from Anderson-Person.
A pre-sentence investigation had recommended a 90-day jail sentence for the child endangerment offense. The city of Clarkfield prosecuted the no contact violation, and had not sought additional jail time.
