By 1news.co.nz
A court has heard heartbreaking details of the death of a little Ohio girl who was abandoned by her mother at home while she went on holiday.
Jailyn died in June last year aged 16 months when her mother Kristel Candelario went to Puerto Rico and then Detroit for 10 days, leaving her in a playpen with a few bottles of milk.
Candelario arrived home to find her daughter dead. Last month she admitted charges of aggravated murder and child endangerment, CNN reported.
She has been sentenced to life with no chance of parole.
Security video played in court showed Candelario leaving on June 6 and arriving home on June 16.
Minutes after arriving home, she called 911.
“Please I need help,” she said on the call.
“Please, please, help me. My daughter is dying.”
According to CNN, she dressed Jailyn in clean clothes in a bid to hide the horrors the wee girl had suffered.
Assistant Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Anna Faragila said Jailyn was found on a mattress covered in urine and faeces.
She was emaciated with sunken eyes and dry lips, and there was faeces in her mouth and fingernails.
“Animals take care of their infants better,” Faragila said.
She weighed several kilograms less than she did at a doctor’s appointment months earlier.
“This is a case we’ll have branded in our minds and in our hearts forever,” Cleveland Police Sgt Teresa Gomez said.
Forensic pathologist Elizabeth Mooney said Jailyn could have endured pain and suffering for up to a week.
“This feeling of abandonment for days on end, coupled with the pain of starvation and extreme thirst is a type of suffering I don’t think any of us could ever fully fathom.”
Candelario’s mother, in a statement, said her daughter had battled health struggles, including mental illness.
