BANGOR — A woman charged with causing the death of her 3-year-old daughter over the weekend told police she left the child in the car while retrieving trash, then fell down an embankment into the Penobscot River and didn’t return for hours.

Kelly Brown, 40, of Havertown, Pennsylvania, has been charged with manslaughter in the death of her daughter, Fiona Brown, who was found dead alongside a family dog in a vehicle parked at a gas station in Milford, a small town north of Bangor.

Brown appeared briefly in Penobscot County Superior Court on Monday via Zoom from the county jail, where she has been held since Sunday. There was no discussion about the allegations against her, despite a lengthy document filed by police supporting her arrest.

Brown did not enter a plea and only spoke when Judge Sean Ociepka asked if she understood the charges against her. Bail was set at $50,000 with the condition that Brown have no contact with children under the age of 18. It was not immediately clear Monday afternoon if Brown had posted bail and was released.

Manslaughter is defined by Maine law as “recklessly, or with criminal negligence, caus(ing) the death of a human being.” The charge carries a punishment of up to 30 years in prison.

Her next hearing is scheduled for Sept. 26 at the Penobscot County Judicial Center in Bangor.

CHILD’S DEATH LIKELY HEAT-RELATED 

The affidavit details how police came upon the grim discovery and what led them to charge the mother. The story she told police appears to contradict video evidence officers pulled from the gas station.

The 12-page document states Brown and her daughter traveled to Maine from Pennsylvania in late July to visit family here. They stayed for one night in Clifton, another small town near Milford, and then at a place on a lake near Millinocket. They visited Maine often, police said, and usually with Brown’s husband, but he was working this year.

The mother and daughter were supposed to return to the relative’s house in Clifton on Thursday but didn’t show up, family told police. Shortly after that, Kelly Brown’s mother contacted police to request a welfare check, saying she had noticed Kelly Brown posting “bizarre things” on social media. The affidavit says Brown’s mother also told police that her daughter spoke of “seeing spirits.”

Police in Maine began to ping Kelly Brown’s cellphone, leading them to her white Nissan Murano, which was parked at a gas station in Milford on Saturday evening. By that point, a business owner had also called about the vehicle, police said.

An officer was dispatched to the scene and discovered Fiona’s body and a deceased dog, Penelope, that belonged to the family, in the front driver’s seat area. Investigators found “no obvious causes of (the child’s) death other than her exposure to extreme heat in a locked car,” the document states.

Autopsy results on Fiona Brown were still pending Monday but the medical examiner’s office said hyperthermia (an elevated body temperature) appeared to be the most likely cause of death, Maine State Police said in a statement.

The temperature reached 82 degrees in Bangor on Saturday, according to the National Weather Service, but the temperature inside a vehicle with no windows open would have been much higher.

MOTHER TELLS POLICE SHE FELL IN RIVER

Not long after police broke the window of the locked vehicle Saturday evening, officers said Kelly Brown emerged from behind the gas station to inquire what was happening.

Brown told police that she and her daughter had been camping at various spots along the Penobscot River for several days and spent some of that time picking up trash. She said they had stopped at the gas station in Milford to rest, and she had left the child and dog inside the car around 2 p.m. Saturday to throw away some of the trash they collected, but then fell down an embankment behind the gas station and into the river.

“The river was rocky and scary and before she knew it, she got caught up in the riptide, was being whipped around and fighting to stay above the water,” Brown told police, according to the affidavit.

She said she then spent hours trying to escape as the river pulled her farther from the gas station. When police asked why her clothes didn’t appear wet, officers wrote that Brown said it had been several hours since she has crawled out of the river and tried to get back to the car. She was last seen leaving the vehicle just before 6 a.m. Saturday, according to surveillance video from the gas station reviewed by police, and didn’t return until police were already on scene.

Once she was told her daughter and dog were dead, Brown “began to scream” and said they were “her world” and she “didn’t know what to do.”