A Minnesota mother was sentenced Thursday to 18 years in prison for beating her 2-year-old daughter to death last year in St. Paul.
30-year-old Ciashia Lee previously pleaded guilty in Ramsey County District Court to second-degree unintentional murder while committing a felony in the death of Melody Vang.
In exchange for the plea, a charge of first-degree murder-with a pattern of child abuse was dismissed at sentencing.
Lee will receive credit for the 516 days she has already been in jail.
The presumptive sentencing range was between 128 and 180 months in prison, but prosecutors sought an additional three months for Lee due to the girl’s age and her vulnerability, according to court records.
Lee told police that she lost her temper when Melody Vang “kept crying” and woke up her infant, so she “kept hitting” her daughter, according to charges.
Lee’s husband, 43-year-old John Vang, was sentenced on March 21 to 240 days in the Ramsey County workhouse and three years of supervised probation after pleading guilty to felony child endangerment in connection with Melody’s death.
The girl and her siblings were in foster care together until 2020. The children were returned to Lee and Vang after both parents completed chemical dependency treatment and mental health evaluations, according to court documents.
After Vang called police about “an incident” on Jan. 10, 2021, officers found Melody dead on the back porch of the Dayton’s Bluff home where her family lived. The girl wore only a diaper and her body had been wrapped in bedding and a rug, according to the criminal complaint. She was cold to the touch and rigor mortis had set in.
Melody had multiple large bruises on her face and body, and “cuts and scratches on a significant portion of her body,” the criminal complaint read. An autopsy determined she died of head trauma due to assault.
When police asked Lee what she did to Melody, she said she punched her “too many times because the girl wouldn’t stop crying,” according to the complaint. “Lee also said she put her hand over the girl’s mouth to stop her from crying, but it didn’t work so she continued to hit the girl out of anger. Lee eventually picked up the girl, hit her some more, and took her to a ‘time out’ closet.”
Lee reported that Vang hadn’t witnessed what she did that evening, but had seen her hit the girl in the past.
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