DENVER -- A Denver woman who police said tried to drown her three children in the bathtub will be in court Friday to be formally advised of the charges against her.

Brenda Hernandez, 24, was being held on $150,000 bond after she was arrested on three counts of suspicion of attempted first-degree murder.

According to police, Hernandez ran out of her apartment naked and pushed one officer when they arrived Saturday to check on her welfare. They were sent after a sister of the woman called to tell them Hernandez had said she wanted to die and that she was distraught.

Officers knocked on a door of an apartment in the 3100 block of West Mexico Avenue and heard a woman's voice say, "No one's here. Go away."

After continuing knocking a nude woman opened the door and was quickly arrested. Police entered the apartment and found a 7-year-old boy, a 3-year-old girl, and a 2-year-old girl in the bathroom, also naked and wet.

Investigators said the woman had undressed herself and the children and filled the bathtub with water, intending to drown them.

The arrest affidavit said Hernandez told her sister she wanted to die and that she was trying to drown one of her three children.

It goes on to say that Hernandez's son attempted to pull his mother off the child prior to the officers' intervention.

"The outcome could have been much different had the officers not arrived when they did," said Lynn Kimbrough of the Denver District Attorney's Office.

The children were placed in the custody of protective services. A spokeswoman for the district attorney's office said fortunately the children were not physically harmed.

Her husband was out of town at the time, police said.