Woman Abandoning Child in Freezing Temperatures.

A woman from the western Russian region of Altai has reportedly been sentenced to three and a half years in behind bars for leaving her son on an unheated veranda in the dead of winter.

According to investigators, the defendant left her two-year-old son alone on her porch in the town of Gornyak on January 18 while she visited a friend. A neighbor found the son unattended and called the police.

"The court, evaluating the evidence gathered during the investigation, found the defendant guilty,” Olga Chesnokova, the senior assistant to the regional head of the Investigative Committee was cited as saying by the state-run RIA Novosti news agency.

The investigation also turned up evidence that, in March, the woman had robbed a neighbor’s house.