A 24 year old Nigerian woman has been sentenced to 80 years in prison for the death of one of the children, 16-month-old Elias Castillo.
She still faces charges related to the rest of the children. Defense attorney Mike DeGeurin said he still believes Tata should not have been tried for murder because the deaths were an accident.”
The sentence is not going to fix things. It’s not going to make anybody feel better later on. But the jury has spoken. That’s their sentence,” DeGeurin said.
Defense attorneys had presented expert testimony to argue that a faulty stove or refrigerator may have sparked the blaze.
Prosecutor Steve Baldassano said that while he has sympathy for Tata’s family, she had nobody to blame but herself.
“She was being paid to watch these children. She knew better,” Baldassano said. “It’s not the stove. It’s not the refrigerator. It’s not any parents’ fault. It’s nobody’s fault but her own.”
One of the surviving children, Makayla Dickerson, stood next to Baldassano as he spoke. Makayla, whose 3-year-old brother Shomari died in the fire, showed reporters scars the fire left on her right forearm.
Tata’s attorneys argued she never intended to hurt the children, who ranged in age from 16 months to 3 years old, and whom Tata had referred to as “her babies.” But prosecutors did not need to show she intended to harm them, only that the deaths occurred because she put them in danger by leaving them alone.
Under Texas law, a person can be convicted of felony murder if he or she committed an underlying felony and that action led to the death.
Tata still faces three more counts of felony murder in relation to the other children who died, and three counts of abandoning a child and two counts of reckless injury to a child in relation to the three who were hurt prosecutors say they plan to pursue.
