An Arizona mother who murdered her two kids, ages 7 and 9, using a meat cleaver “designed to cut the bones of animals” will die behind bars after being handed two consecutive life sentences on Friday for her heinous crimes.

Yui Inoue, 44, was sentenced by Maricopa County Superior Judge Jeffrey Rueter, according to AZFamily, and he didn’t mince words when speaking to her.

“Words can’t adequately describe what occurred,” Rueter said, per AZFamily.

“I can’t imagine what those children went through in their last minutes,” he told the court. “The fear, the pain, the suffering. It’s incomprehensible.”

Inoue, who spoke through a Japanese interpreter, said that she believed her children were not dead. She was given the two life sentences plus two 20-year sentences to be served consecutively.

“They are spending time with my parents,” Inoue reportedly said. “I love my children very much so it’s very strange. My children are with my parents.”

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Inoue, who lived in Tempe, was accused of killing her two kids in a heinous 2021 murder case that wrapped up in February with her conviction.

“Mia and Kai Inoue were sleeping soundly in their beds when their own mother came into their bedroom holding a knife, a meat cleaver … and she attacked them with it,” prosecutors said during closing arguments, according to AZFamily. “She had to think. She had to act. And there’s nothing unclear or speculative about any of that.”

A Maricopa County jury found Inoue guilty of two counts of first-degree murder and two counts of child abuse in connection to a prior investigation by the Arizona Department of Child Safety and the May 2021 murders of her children Mia and Kai Inoue, who were identified by local officials.

Prosecutors say Inoue set upon her two children after claiming to hear “voices telling her to kill” them. She called 911 afterward and then went to flag down officers at a police substation on East Apache Boulevard near Arizona State University. The distraught mother was primarily speaking Japanese, police said, and she reportedly confessed to the officers on the spot about the slayings. Authorities went up to her apartment in response and found the mutilated bodies of Inoue’s kids.

“[S]he was hearing voices telling her to kill her children,” charging documents said.

Inoue later told police that she woke up with blood on her hands around 4:30 a.m. to find her children dead and also covered in blood near a doorway. After that, she said she took a bath and finally “woke up” to the reality of the violence she committed. Her lawyers claim Inoue had no memory of carrying out the killings. According to local ABC affiliate KNXV, Tempe police said a blood-soaked meat cleaver was discovered inside the vehicle Inoue drove to the police substation.

“We are here because this woman tried to decapitate two souls,” said Maricopa County prosecutor Shaylee Beasley during her closing arguments in February, according to the Arizona Republic.

Beasley described in detail how Inoue “delivered chop after chop” to the children while they both “tried to protect their heads.” She reportedly showed close-up photos of the children’s horrific injuries to the jury and claimed their deaths were connected to a bitter divorce she was having with their father.

Inoue’s attorney, Rebecca Felmly, had previously said that she believed there was enough reasonable doubt presented at Inoue’s trial for the jury to deliver a verdict of not guilty. During her first court appearance in 2021, Inoue told the judge “I did not kill anybody” through her interpreter.

“(The medical examiner) likened the amount of force to a guillotine,” Felmly said, according to AZFamily. “She is a very tiny, very slightly-built woman. She doesn’t have the energy, the power, or the strength to cause that type of injury to those kids.”

The child abuse case that Inoue was convicted of stemmed from a report made by Inoue’s husband in March 2021 — just months before the killings — saying Inoue “took Kai” and their whereabouts were unknown. “Police eventually located Ms. Inoue and Kai behind a convenience store,” DCS officials said in a May 2021 statement. “Ms. Inoue was taken to a psychiatric hospital and Kai was returned to his father.”

DCS investigators said they did not observe any “visible signs of abuse or neglect on the children” and the kids claimed “they felt safe with their parents.” The investigation did not find any evidence to warrant removal from the home, according to DCS officials.

Colin Kalmbacher contributed to this report.

A family with children was enjoying a meal at a Fremont, California, McDonald’s when a 22-year-old man allegedly slapped the mother and made a racist remark.

Prosecutors on Wednesday charged Marcus Harper with a hate crime and battery over the alleged incident. According to the Fremont Police Department, Harper, around 2:15 p.m. on April 5, walked up to a mother, father and two children as they ate in McDonald’s.

More from Law&Crime: Florida man takes 8-inch chef’s knife out of package to repeatedly stab woman criticizing his ‘uncontrolled kids’ while in line at supermarket butcher’s counter

“Harper initially took food from their table and ate it in front of them ,” cops wrote in the press release. “Harper walked away from the table for a brief time before returning to the table to slap the adult victim on her face while standing behind her.”

Prosecutors allege Harper then stated: “You Indians need to go back to your country.”

The defendant then threw a sauce packet at one of the children, a 9-year-old girl, before leaving. Cops obtained an arrest warrant and located him sitting alone in his vehicle in the area of Marshlands Road and Thornton Avenue on Tuesday. They took him into custody without further incident.

Local CW affiliate KRON obtained a police report that said Harper did not deny his actions. He reportedly said that the father gave him a “weird feeling” and felt as if he wanted him to slap her. Harper claimed he blacked out at the time of the alleged assault.

A mother in Indiana has been accused of bringing a gun to a school where her daughter used to be enrolled as a sixth grader in an attempt to confront a teacher over the educator’s curriculum.

“Your a child predator [SIC],” wrote Carrie Rivers, 48, in an alleged Facebook message to the teacher after her arrest last week, according to local NBC affiliate WTHR.

The Indianapolis mother allegedly told police that the educator gave her daughter an assignment that she didn’t approve of, which covered same-sex relationships and marriages. The teacher said it was actually an assignment about flags, and that a rainbow LGBTQ flag was brought into class with the words “be kind” on it, along with several flags from other countries.

A mother in California has been charged with murder for leaving her 4-year-old daughter to die in a “partially submerged” SUV after she sent the vehicle careening into an irrigation canal during a DUI crash, with cops later finding the woman “taking a bath while her daughter remained in peril” at the scene, according to prosecutors.

Juliette Acosta, 26, was originally only charged with felony drunk driving for the deadly DUI crash that took the life of her daughter, Reagan Herrin, on the night of March 8 near the town of Hickman. On Friday, the Stanislaus County District Attorney’s Office reported in a press release that Acosta’s charges had been upgraded to murder; vehicular manslaughter; driving under the influence of alcohol causing injury; permitting a child to suffer under circumstances likely to cause great bodily injury or death; and resisting, delaying or obstructing a public officer, peace officer or emergency medical technician following an investigation.

A New Jersey mother says she is taking legal action against a day care that has given her no explanation for how her 2-year-old daughter came home last week with one of her “cornrow” hair braids missing from her head — claiming they didn’t know if her child “pulled it out” herself or whether something more nefarious happened.

“You have to use some type of force for a braid to be removed,” Tamara Hemingway told New York ABC station WABC about her daughter, Myla, and what happened to her.

“It was a cornrow so it was braided down to her scalp,” Hemingway said. “There’s no way that, I don’t know who could have done it, but I know for a fact she or a kid would not have done that.”

A mother in Minnesota is heading to prison for murdering her 23-month-old son by slamming his head repeatedly into a bedroom wall and then lying to police about what happened, claiming he was run over by his father — who happened to have his car in the shop at the time.

“She took my baby’s life,” said Robert Ortez, father of Aaryan, who was killed by his mom Larena Jackson in August 2023. “I still don’t know, to this day, what really happened because she isn’t saying anything,” Ortez told Valley News Live. “I’m still trying to figure out why she did it. I don’t know why[.]”

A man in Manatee County, Florida, terrorized his pregnant girlfriend for days, physically assaulting not just her, but her two toddlers as well, say local deputies.

Anthony Jesus Reyes-Enos, 22, is currently sitting in jail without bond for charges including felony domestic battery by strangulation, aggravated battery on a pregnant woman, tampering with a 911 call, false imprisonment, and aggravated child abuse.

A mother in Florida is accused of terrorizing her son and a 65-year-old man who took the pair into his home to let them live with various forms of torture and abuse, like making her child “sit in a squatted position for hours on end” and striking the man with random objects, including a knife and “sharpening tool” on one occasion, cops say.

“She is f—ing strong,” the man allegedly told investigators after being questioned about the abuse, according to Miami ABC affiliate WPLG.

Jasmine Jean-Baptiste, 31, is accused of beating and pummeling the sexagenarian so badly that police say he is now blind in one eye. She allegedly “exploit(ed) his compassion and concern for her children,” according to the Miami Shores Police Department, and tortured her son behind closed doors in the process.

“A witness reported observing a significant and consistent pattern of abuse, including multiple instances of battery on various occasions,” the police report states, per WPLG. “The victim further provided photographs from various incidents, which depicted bruising, contusions and facial lacerations consistent with his account of abuse.”

A mother in Hawaii is behind bars, along with her girlfriend, for allegedly starving and beating her 3-year-old daughter to death using belts, paddles, sticks and slippers to pound on the toddler — while also limiting her water intake to 8 ounces a day — along with her three of her siblings, ages 2 through 6, who managed to survive the “disturbing” abuse, according to police.

“First responders found Sarai malnourished and pulseless, with ashen skin and bruises to her legs, hips, arms, face, back and head,” explained Honolulu Police Department Lt. Deena Thoemmes at a press conference last Thursday after announcing the arrests of Janae Perez and Ashley Utley for the death of Perez’s daughter, Sarai Perez-Rivera, in June 2024, according to Hawaii News Now.

“Through the investigation, it was learned that Janae and Ashley limited Sarai and her siblings intake of water and food,” Thoemmes said. “Janae and Ashley did not allow them to eat often and only allowed them to drink 8 ounces of water a day.”