A defense attorney grilled Ruth Correa for hours on Friday, asking about her traumatic upbringing, abandonment issues and bitterness toward her older brother, Sergio Correa, as she took the stand for the second day in a row to testify against Sergio.

After staying stoic Thursday while she described plunging a knife into Matthew Lindquist, pummeling a golden retriever with a golf club and watching her brother wreak hours of havoc inside the Lindquists' home, the 27-year-old broke down Friday when she was asked about her young children. The court had to take a brief recess as tears flooded her face, the first show of emotion yet in her harrowing testimony.

The Correa siblings are charged with killing Matthew, Janet and Kenneth Lindquist on Dec. 19, 2017, and setting their Griswold house ablaze. Ruth Correa this summer agreed to testify against her brother, who she portrays as the mastermind of the crimes, in exchange for a lesser sentence.

Joseph Lopez, one of Sergio Correa's public defenders, noted that it was the thought of being away from her children, not the memory of what was done to the Lindquists, that finally broke her. Taking the stand, Lopez said, was Ruth Correa's only hope to someday go home to her children, as she faced "heavy-duty charges" and a sentence of 180 years behind bars.

"You were looking at dying in jail," Lopez said to Ruth Correa. "You were looking at never going home ... you were looking at never seeing your kids again."

Lopez's line of questioning Friday examined Ruth Correa's state of mind at the time she reached the cooperation agreement with prosecutors that led to her taking the stand this week. She testified that in 2017 she was not medicated for her mental illnesses, was drinking a lot of alcohol and was "high all the time." She said she began smoking marijuana when she was just 9 years old.

Lopez peppered her with questions about her family history: from childhood abuse in Puerto Rico, abandonment by her parents and the father of her child and then another abandonment by her once protective older brother.

Ruth Correa, who is being held at York Correctional Institution in Niantic as she awaits sentencing, agreed that before her arrest she felt like she was "all alone," that it seemed like Sergio had "turned his back" on her and that she "had a lot of pain in her heart."

"You felt like he left you for dead?" he asked her about Sergio Correa, who sat quietly in the courtroom on the sixth day of his trial. She said she did.

She also testified that when she spoke to police in May 2018, she was under the impression that her brother, once her closest family member, had taken "a hit" out on her, that he wanted her dead.

Lopez also spent hours of his intense cross-examination attacking the credibility of Ruth Correa's statements, pointing out discrepancies between her court testimonies and interviews with police at the time of her arrest more than three years ago.

He relentlessly pointed out differences in her many statements, from how she described Kenneth Lindquist's bludgeoned body, to her account of how many times she struck the family's dog, Skylar, to her answer about whether she had worn jewelry — a ring and a cross necklace — that was stolen from Janet Lindquist the night of the crimes. The defense brought forth multiple photos from Ruth Correa's Facebook page in which she's seen wearing a ring and necklace, comparing those photos to statements she had made to police about not wearing jewelry, and "not wanting to walk around looking at (a ring on) her hand knowing that we killed that woman and took her stuff."

On Thursday, Ruth Correa described in gruesome detail the torture inflicted upon Janet Lindquist before her death. She said Friday that the night of the crimes, she was just following orders from her brother.

Sergio Correa faces 14 charges in connection to the Lindquists' murders, including home invasion, arson and burglary.

His trial is expected to continue before Judge Hunchu Kwak on Monday in New London Superior Court Part A, where major crimes are heard.

t.hartz@theday.com