Alabama Man Sentenced To 40 Years For Burning Children

2024 Author: Steven Freeman | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 08:15

Derrick Defoe, a 33-year-old Alabama resident, was sentenced Monday to 40 years behind bars for helping to force his girlfriend's two children into a seething bath as punishment for breaking a bed.

During Monday's hearing in Limestone County, Defoe and Amanda Reyer, 25, were said to have submerged the woman's 2-year-old daughter Adriauna and her brother, Cameron, 5, in a boiling bath in the couple's home in a mobile home.

The incident occurred on June 13, 2015 and since then the pair waited for justice behind bars.

According to experts who investigated the case, the water in which the children were placed had an extreme temperature for the human body: 150 degrees Fahrenheit (the water boils at 212 degrees).

As explained when being put in the liquid, the girl jumped out of the water, but the mother dived her again, according to what the accused explained to the WAFF station.

The children's reaction was such that the minor ended up with burns in 70 percent of her small body and when she was taken to the hospital by her own mother, she suffered respiratory and heart failure. "From the neck down, her skin looked like a patchwork blanket," an officer testified during the woman's trial.

When the police came to the house they found the minor with a shaved head and a chipped tooth, trembling. In the mobile home, authorities found pieces of the children's skin scattered on the floor.

Adriauna and Cameron survived the incident but had to undergo multiple surgeries.

The mother of both minors received their sentence last November. The case so deeply touched Robert Baker, the judge in charge, that he tearfully told the woman before sentencing her: “I am not one of those who shudders easily. But you did it. This is not a situation where you didn't know what a medicine would do … hot water is hot. Pity. It burns”.

As for the woman's boyfriend, just before he faced the judge at this Monday's hearing and heard the defense's statements, he pleaded guilty to the two charges of aggravated child abuse against him.