A woman has killed herself in an Oklahoma prison five years after she was convicted of pushing her husband to his death from their high-rise apartment, the Oklahoma Department of Corrections confirmed to PEOPLE.
Amber Hilberling, 25, was found hanging from the bunk bed of her cell by another inmate on Monday at 5:20 p.m., according to a news release from the DOC. Hilbering was in a medium-security housing unit at the Mabel Bassett Correctional Center in McLoud, Oklahoma.
Staff attempted life-saving procedures, corrections officials said, but Hilberling was pronounced dead on the scene at 5:33 p.m. The Office of the Chief Medical Examiner preliminarily ruled Amber’s death as suicide by hanging.
The DOC’s Office of the Inspector General is further investigating the incident and will release more information when the investigation concludes, according to the release.
Hilberling was convicted in 2013 of second-degree murder in the death of her husband, Josh Hilberling, and was serving a 25-year sentence, NBC News reports. Her conviction was upheld in 2014 by the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals, according to CBS.
Josh, an U.S. Air Force veteran, died in June 2011 after falling 17 stories from the University Club Tower. Amber, who was 19 at the time, said she pushed her husband in self-defense during a fight in which she feared for his life, NBC reports.
Seven months pregnant at the time, Amber said she didn’t intend for the 23-year-old Josh to die.
