PITTSBURGH — The husband of a Pennsylvania woman on trial for allegedly drowning their two youngest sons in a bathtub has testified she wanted to surrender to police for purposely running over the boys with her van the year before — but he talked her out of it.

Mark Schlemmer testified Thursday in his wife’s trial on charges she drowned their sons, 6-year-old Daniel and 3-year-old Luke, in April 2014.

The defense says 43-year-old Laurel Schlemmer was too mentally ill to know what she was doing.

But prosecutors hope to convince an Allegheny County judge that the McCandless woman was bent on killing the boys so she could focus her attention on their older brother, who was 7 when the others were drowned.