A little girl in Michigan survived after her mother and two young brothers froze to death in the cold winter weather. 

The girl asked for help from a neighbor and police found her mother and the two boys dead in an overgrown field.

Michael Bouchard, Oakland County Sheriff, identified the deceased as Monica Cannady, 35, and her boys Kyle and Malik Milton, nine and three. Their bodies were discovered in a field in Pontiac, Michigan. Autopsies showed that they died from hypothermia. 

Cannady’s 10-year-old daughter knocked on a door of a house near where her family died and told the resident that her family had frozen to death in a nearby field. She was treated for hypothermia and is said to be in stable condition.

Sheriff Bouchard said Cannady lived with her three children in an apartment but she was going through a mental health crisis and believed someone was trying to kill her. She fled her apartment with her children. Relatives noticed her paranoid behavior and tried to help her, but she was uncooperative.

Cannady and her children were reportedly knocking on people’s doors begging for food. She refused to accept money from people trying to help her, and she went into the field with her children. 

Sheriff Bouchard said his office had received calls from residents about the family’s plight, but they had been unable to find them. Cannady had instructed the children to hide if they saw or heard anyone trying to approach them. 

Sheriff Bouchard said it appeared that at first the family was hiding in an abandoned car, but Cannady directed the children to sleep in the field, resulting in their deaths, with the exception of the 10-year-old, who woke up and went for help.

Cannady’s brother, Andre Harsten, said he looked for his sister all weekend.

Sheriff Bouchard called for increased mental health funding from the government, saying that cases of suicides and overdoses were increasing.