A Virginia woman has been sentenced to 15 years in prison after pleading guilty to child abuse and felony homicide charges connected to the scalding death of her 2-year-old daughter in 2018.
29-year-old Shelby Rae Love was sentenced to 15 years active prison time, with 15 additional years suspended on the condition of good behavior and supervised probation after release.
Love’s sentencing comes just a month after her boyfriend, John Tucker Hardee, was sentenced to 35 years active time for his role in the child’s death.
Love’s daughter Harley died back in 2018 after authorities say Hardee scalded her in the bathtub while Love was at work. Hardee texted her around 4:30 p.m. telling her to leave work and that he was “going to prison.”
Love arrived to their shared home in East Ocean View about an hour later and she didn’t take the child to the hospital. Instead she tried to treat her with combination of Tylenol, gauze, Pedialyte, lidocaine and apple cider vinegar, prosecutors say.
It wasn’t until hours later at 3:30 a.m., when Harley was unresponsive and shaking, that she and Hardee took the child to Children’s Hospital of the King’s Daughters. The 2-year-old was pronounced dead there shortly after arrival.
An autopsy showed that Harley had blunt force injuries throughout her body, including a 7-inch bruise on the back of her head, a large bruise on her abdomen and an internal injury to small intestine in addition to burns to 30 percent of her body. However, a second autopsy determined she would have lived if Love and Hardee had given her prompt medical care.
“Shelby Love very likely could have saved her daughter Harley,” said Commonwealth’s Attorney Ramin Fatehi. “Instead, Ms. Love covered for the man who severely burned her daughter, and Ms. Love inflicted terrible pain in her daughter’s last hours. Ms. Love will spend the next 15 years in prison. Hopefully her role in the death of her daughter will be on her conscience forever.”
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