North Carolina Mom Sentenced to Up to 10 Years for Abandoning Young Daughters in Hot Car While Gambling
A North Carolina mother will serve several years in prison after abandoning her young girls in a sweltering car for more than six hours while she gambled at an online casino.
According to court records reviewed by Law&Crime, Wake County Superior Court Judge Rebecca W. Holt on Thursday sentenced Launice Shanique Battle to 94 months (just under eight years) to 125 months (about 10 1/2 years) in a state correctional facility for the 2022 hot car deaths of 3-year-old Amora Milbourne and 2-year-old Trinity Milbourne.
Battle’s punishment came after she reached an agreement with prosecutors to plead guilty to one count of second-degree murder in connection with the children’s deaths. She was first charged with two counts of felony murder and faced a potential sentence of over 80 years in prison.
According to court records, Holt credited Battle with 667 days already served.
Records reveal that when assessing Battle’s sentence, the court found no aggravating elements that may have raised her sentence, but did find Battle’s willingness to “accept responsibility” for “criminal conduct” to be a mitigating factor, stating that “a mitigated sentence is justified.”
As previously reported, at approximately 9:38 p.m. on August 27, 2022, officers from the Raleigh Police Department arrived at the Duke Raleigh Hospital in the 3400 block of Wake Forest Road in response to the mysterious deaths of two young children, later identified as Amora and Trinity. The girls were both confirmed dead that evening, and Battle was arrested the next morning.
The county medical examiner’s autopsy found that both girls died as a result of hyperthermia, which occurs when the human body absorbs or generates more heat than it can expel.
“On 8/27/2022, she [Amora] and her 2-year-old sibling [Trinity] were reportedly left in a vehicle parked behind a gambling establishment from approximately 1430 hours to 2030 hours (6 hours),” an autopsy report acquired by Goldsboro, North Carolina CBS affiliate WNCN claimed. ”
It was parked in a perhaps somewhat shaded location. The documented weather at the time was hot, with a high temperature of 95 degrees Fahrenheit and sky ranging from partially to mostly cloudy with light rain. Her mother discovered them lifeless and drove them to the Duke Raleigh Emergency Department.
The report also stated that when the girls were discovered, they had “no body temperature” and were already in the process of “mild [body] decomposition.”
Battle’s cousin, Keisha Harris, previously told Raleigh NBC station WRAL that Battle wasn’t a bad mother. She simply committed a “careless mistake.”
“She was always there,” Harris explained to the broadcaster. “She is a compassionate and loving mother to her children at the end of the day. She is not a cold-blooded murderer. “She isn’t a killer.”
According to The News & Observer, records from the Wake County Department of Health and Human Services reveal that Child Protective Services began three investigations into Battle between 2019 and 2022, the most recent occurring less than two months before the daughters died.