A Tarrant County court gave a woman in North Texas 60 years in jail for her part in the death of a 2-year-old girl who was left in her care.
Based on the Tarrant County Criminal District Attorney’s Office, Shamonica Jackson, 39, was given her sentence on Friday after pleading guilty to injury to a child in the death of Aniyah Darnell.
Investigators said Aniyah’s body was full of cuts and bruises. When cops found the toddler with those serious injuries at an Arlington apartment in November 2018, she was not responding and was also very thirsty. Med City Arlington Hospital was where she died that same day.
Jackson and her boyfriend were in charge of the child from August 2018 until she died.
Police say Jackson spanked the child with a belt as a punishment.
It was last year that her boyfriend, Derick Roberson, got three years of probation for not stopping the abuse. He admitted that he hurt a child by neglect. Roberson was given his sentence after the judge threw out the hearing.
Before they pleaded guilty, the couple was charged with murder with the death penalty.
The mother of the child told Arlington police that she was getting angry because the child was going to the bathroom in her clothes. The Star-Telegram got a statement in 2018 that says Jackson hit the child with a belt and her hand to “teach the girl a lesson.”
Jackson told the cops that Aniya had a bad wound on her back that was called a burn, but she hadn’t taken the girl to the doctor. The statement says Jackson instead tried “home remedies” to treat the wound and kept hitting the girl as a way to discipline her.
While Roberson and Jackson took care of Aniyah, prosecutors say Roberson knew that Jackson hit the girl several times and gave her a bath that burned her buttocks and foot badly.
According to a forensic pathologist, she died because she was abused and dehydrated. The way she died was also murder.
