DCFS had its eye on troubled S.L. mother

The Salt Lake City woman whose young daughter was found dead in her car Friday on I-70 has been under the eye of state child welfare officials before and has been treated for mental health concerns.

She will undergo a competency evaluation to determine whether she can stand trial on a murder charge.

Wendy Bullock, 28, was charged Monday in 7th District Court in Moab with first-degree murder in the death of her 2 1/2-year-old daughter. She appeared before Judge Lyle R. Anderson in Moab, where she was appointed a lawyer.

At Tuesday's hearing, K. Andrew Fitzgerald, Bullock's lawyer, told Anderson he believed Bullock's competency was questionable and asked for an evaluation. Grand County Attorney Happy J. Morgan, who is prosecuting the case, said she believes Bullock is competent but didn't object to the evaluation. A competency hearing was set for Feb. 3 in Anderson's courtroom.

Bullock was booked into the Grand County Jail on $500,000 bail and placed on a suicide watch Friday after she asked a motorist at a pull-off area on the freeway near Thompson Springs for razor blades. The Colorado man said she was injured, so he called police.

When troopers and sheriff's deputies arrived, they found the toddler unresponsive in the back of the woman's car. She was determined to be dead, and her body was sent to the Utah State Medical Examiner's Office to determine the cause.

A statement released by Morgan on Tuesday said the investigation is still under way and the County Attorney's Office "does not deem it appropriate to release any information regarding the investigation at this time."

Carol Sisco, spokeswoman for the state's Department of Human Services, said the Division of Child and Family Services had been keeping an eye on Bullock and her daughter in recent months, following Bullock's treatment at Salt Lake mental health facilities. Sisco said everything had seemed OK.

"We never actually had custody of the little girl," she said. "But when her mom was receiving treatment (at the University of Utah Neuropsychiatric Institute in July) . . . a judge ordered the child into foster care, but it was foster care with a relative."

The girl lived with the relative for a month, and "Mom seemed to be doing better and got through her hospitalization," Sisco said.

In August, Bullock was referred to Valley Mental Health's outpatient unit, Valley spokeswoman Connie Hines said. She declined to comment on the reasons for the treatment.