A woman from Miami-Dade County, Florida, was sentenced Monday to five years in prison for the death of a girl in July 2021, whom she forgot inside her car with high temperatures.
Juana Pérez Domingo, 44, pleaded guilty to aggravated homicide for the death of Joselyn Maritza Méndez, 2, and accepted an agreement with the Prosecutor's Office to avoid a minimum sentence of 13 years in prison if she went to trial and was finally doomed.
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The woman was supposed to take the girl to a daycare in Homestead, southwest of Miami, but decided to make a detour to her home because the educational center had not yet opened.
According to what she told the authorities then, she got distracted doing chores in her home and forgot that the minor had been left behind in the car.
When he went to pick her up seven hours later in the car in high Florida summer temperatures, he took her to a nearby hospital but doctors couldn't do anything for her.
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Méndez's mother declared in 2021 that she found two missed calls from the woman on her cell phone when she left work around 3 in the afternoon.
He contacted her and found out what had happened: "He killed my girl. I don't know what to do," her mother said then.
Authorities also discovered during the investigation that Perez-Domingo did not have a driver's license.
After serving her sentence, the woman will be on probation for another five years.
With information from
NBC News Miami
