The woman who was found dead alongside her 9-year-old daughter in the garage of their Lafayette home this week had a history of alcohol abuse and had expressed a desire to kill herself, according to court documents obtained by The Camera on Friday.
Patrice Clark was arrested twice on charges of misdemeanor child abuse — once in 2001 and again in 2002 — after police found her intoxicated while caring for her infant daughter.
During the first incident, police reported that she told officers, “I want to end my life. It is too hard.”
Clark was placed on suicide watch at the jail, according to a Boulder County Sheriff’s Office arrest report.
The 45-year-old woman was scheduled today to begin a 20-day work-release sentence for a September DUI arrest in Erie. Her blood-alcohol level at the the time of her arrest was 0.266 — more than three times the legal driving limit.
Clark and her daughter, Nicole, were found dead Wednesday night in the back seat of a car inside the garage of their home at 1524 Harvest Drive in Lafayette.
Police, who said there was an “overwhelming” smell of exhaust fumes in the garage, suspect that the two died of carbon-monoxide poisoning.
