HAMILTON COUNTY, Ohio (TCD) — A 45-year-old woman could face almost two decades in prison after she pleaded guilty to charges relating to the death of her toddler granddaughter, whose body was found in a cooler.
WXIX-TV reports LaTonya Austin entered the plea Wednesday, Dec. 13, for charges of gross abuse of a corpse, involuntary manslaughter, and tampering with evidence. She will reportedly be sentenced to between 15 and 20 years in prison with 948 days credit for time served.
Austin was indicted in June 2021 on charges of aggravated murder, two counts of murder, two counts of felonious assault, one count of tampering with evidence, and one count of gross abuse of a corpse for the death of 2-year-old Zaila Lee. She could have faced life in prison. The Hamilton County Prosecutor’s Office previously indicted her on charges of abuse of a corpse and tampering with evidence because the girl was discovered in a cooler on Austin’s property.
Lee’s death was ruled a homicide due to blunt force trauma to the head, but she also sustained “deep lacerations” near her hip and a broken arm after she died.
According to WXIX, Austin told investigators one of the other children in her home “shook and cut her up with scissors.”
Austin reportedly wrapped Lee’s body inside multiple trash bags and left her in the cooler. She had been dead for approximately a month before police found her remains.
In the statement announcing Austin’s indictment, then-Hamilton County Prosecutor Joseph Deters said, “It is impossible to comprehend the depravity of an individual able to not only strike a 2-year-old so hard to cause her death, but to then attempt to conceal that crime by stuffing the child’s lifeless body into a cooler. As a father and a grandfather, I am sick.”
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