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A former city teacher facing 50 years in prison for poisoning and drowning her two children was sentenced to just eight years behind bars on Tuesday as a judge was swayed by the role of undiagnosed mental illness in the horrific killings.
"I cannot ignore the shocking gravity of your crimes, but I also cannot ignore the role of post-partum depression," Bronx Supreme Court Justice Martin Marcus said before sentencing Lisette Bamenga, who was convicted in April of two counts of manslaughter.
Bamenga, 32, had originally faced life in prison for the 2012 slayings of her 4-year-old son Trevor Noel Jr. and her infant daughter Violet Lily Noel. The ex-school teacher at P.S 58 in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn had fed her kids a cocktail of windshield wiper fluid mixed with grape juice before drowning them in a bathtub.
Marcus found in a bench trial that she was too emotionally disturbed to be charged with ***, and convicted her of manslaughter instead. Her lawyers had argued she shouldn't be held responsible at all for her actions because she had a mental defect related to post-pregnancy depression.
Handcuffed and dressed in an all-white suit, Bamenga told the court on Tuesday that she never in her right mind would kill her kids.
"My children meant the world to me," she said, looking stoically ahead at the judge. "I think about them every single day. They will always be a part of me."
She said she was sorry "for all those who are feeling pain and suffering for this."
Trevor Noel Jr. (l.) and Violet Lily Noel (r.) were allegedly killed by their mother Lisette Bameng.
(Facebook)
Bamenga said she "will make it a life mission to raise awareness of postpartum depression, so that other families don't have to suffer what I suffered."
The slain children's great-aunt burst out of the courtroom's doors after hearing the sentence — which she ripped as too short.
"Eight years? That's not enough time," fumed Susan Boose. "She could still have other children and put other children in danger."
"She played judge and jury with the life of her children," Boose added. "She sentenced us to a life of misery and pain."
Prosecutors had pushed for a sentence of 40 years for what they described as cold-blooded, intentional ***.
Bamenga had left a note at the scene blaming the children's father, former NYPD cop Trevor Noel, for causing her deadly rage by fathering a child with another woman in Spain.
"My children meant the world to me," Lisette Bamenga said, looking stoically ahead at the judge.
(Michael Schwartz/for New York Daily News)
After searching online for ways to carry out the killings, she drove to a nearby PepBoys and bought windshield wiper fluid.
Back at her apartment on Noble Ave. in Parkchester, she laced her children's grape juice with the toxic mixture, and drowned them in the bathtub. EMS workers found her laying with her wrists slashed in the kitchen.
"The entire Noel family will never be the same," said Assistant District Attorney Nancy Borko.
Marcus said that the sentencing decision was the most difficult he has faced in 26 years on the bench. He said was moved by dozens of letters submitted to the court from Bamenga's supporters, psychologists, and staff at Rikers Island, who described her as a model prisoner.
He described the killings as "horrible," but said that sentencing Bamenga to more time would not serve society, or deter other mothers suffering from post-partum depression from carrying out the same crime.
Outside the courtroom, Bamenga's mother, Liliane Bamenga, called the sentence fair.
"There is no joy here because we lost two kids, two beautiful kids," said the 55-year-old.