Mom Who Left Toddler Home Alone to Die Is Sentenced

UPDATE Mar 19, 2024 1:40 AM CDT

The Cleveland mother who left her 16-month-old daughter home alone for 10 days while she went on vacation—and returned to find the toddler dead in the playpen where she'd been left—was on Monday sentenced to life in prison without parole. Kristel Candelario, 32, pleaded guilty to her daughter's murder last month, NBC News reports. The judge called her actions "the ultimate act of betrayal," and emotional law enforcement personnel and others who worked the case testified to the suffering the little girl endured in her final days. Candelario's attorney said she was an overwhelmed and struggling single mom of two, and had been placed on antidepressants earlier in the year after trying to harm herself. She'd then stopped taking the medication without stepping down the dosage, which can cause side effects, and was "not thinking clearly" when she left her daughter, he said. Candelario said nobody knew how much she was suffering at the time, Spectrum News reports.

Jun 27, 2023 3:30 AM CDT

Ohio authorities say a Cleveland mother went on vacation for 10 days and left her 16-month-old daughter home alone that entire time—and that the mother arrived home to find the toddler dead. Kristel Candelario, 31, called 911 upon returning from her trip to Detroit and Puerto Rico and finding her daughter unresponsive on June 16, and emergency responders say the little girl was dead inside a Pack-N-Play that was soiled with urine and feces. She was extremely dehydrated, authorities say. Her mother was arrested and faces charges including aggravated murder, felonious assault, and child endangerment, Cleveland 19 reports.

"It is unfathomable that a mother would leave her 16-month-old child alone without any supervision for 10 days to go on a vacation. As parents, we are supposed to protect and care for our children. Imagining this child's suffering, during her last days of life alone, is truly horrifying and we will do everything in our power to seek justice on her behalf," the county prosecutor says, per CBS News. Neighbors tell News 5 Cleveland that Candelario had left her child home alone before despite warnings from neighbors not to do so. "There were so many people here; she could have knocked on any of our doors and asked us to take Jailyn," one says. They say Candelario lives with her parents and another daughter, but the parents had recently gone on vacation themselves and taken the older girl along with them. (More Ohio stories.)