The Taiwan High Court’s Kaohsiung Branch Court increased to 7.5 years the prison sentence of a single mother who caused the death of her 5-month-old child by leaving her home alone for two days.
The 21-year-old defendant, surnamed Yang (楊), was originally sentenced by Ciaotou District Court to six years in prison for abandonment resulting in death, but the verdict was appealed by prosecutors on the grounds that it was too light.
In a verdict issued Thursday, the High Court said that at the time of the crime, Yang was living in Kaohsiung’s Zuoying District and the sole caregiver of 1-year-old and 5-month-old daughters.
The younger daughter, the court noted, suffered from ventricular septal defect, a congenital heart condition which caused her to be underweight and made it imperative that she be fed and given her medications on a regular basis.
On the night of Dec. 25, 2019, Yang went out with her older daughter, leaving the younger child at home without having made any arrangements for someone to feed or care for her.
When she returned home two days later, at 5:35 p.m. on Dec. 27, she found her daughter not breathing and without a pulse, but waited until 6:23 p.m. to call an ambulance, the court said.
The girl was later determined to have died of rhabdomyolysis and acute tubular necrosis, both of which are associated with acute kidney failure.
Explaining its sentence, the High Court said that despite her daughter’s health problems, Yang had routinely neglected to feed her on a regular basis, thus failing to fulfill even her basic duties as a parent.
However, the court found that Yang had not intentionally caused the child’s death, while also citing the fact that she was unemployed and is currently pregnant as mitigating factors, and sentenced her to 7.5 years in jail.
The verdict can be appealed.
Source: Focus Taiwan News Channel