A 31-year-old Texas mom will spend her years behind bars for failing to prevent her boyfriend from physically abusing her toddler to death.
On September 22, 2019, officers with the Temple Police Department and Medical Teams responded to a report in 800 Block of South 11th Street, where a child was found dead. After receiving a call about an unresponsive child, medical teams found the unresponsive child not breathing and covered in bruises and injuries. The investigation later on, identified the child as Shannah. Based on the reports from the authorities, together with the Temple Police Department’s Criminal Investigations Unit, Nunez committed the murder, beating the child after being upset over shoes put on the wrong feet.
Reports say before the incident happened, the family was about to go to the supermarket to buy ingredients and food for Shannah’s 3rd birthday party when the suspect shouted at the little girl. “The girl had put the shoes on the wrong feet, and Nunez hit her face. He grabbed the girl in the air and punched her three times before dropping her to the ground,” reports stated. The mother did not call authorities after she saw her boyfriend hitting her child; instead, she picked up Shannah and put her to bed, but her boyfriend followed them inside and choked the child until she “turned blue.”
McAlpine allegedly told the police that she yelled and attempted to stop her boyfriend, but she couldn’t. According to her, Shannah woke up at 2:00 am crying and whining because of stomach pain, and she was not breathing normally. McAlpine told the authorities she put the girl in the shower but called 911 when she saw that her daughter’s stomach was swollen and hot. Shannah could not stand alone and was pronounced dead in the hospital at precisely 3:31 am.
On June 7, 2023, a judge in Bell County mandated a 31-year-old mother, Ashley Marie McAlpine, to be put to jail for 16 years. She was arrested for not calling authorities and failing to prevent her boyfriend from beating her 2-year-old daughter for putting her shoes on the wrong feet just before her third birthday in 2019. Ashley’s daughter, Shannah Leilani, was severely beaten up by her mom’s boyfriend, Jadine Nunez, to death. According to Law and Crime, McAlpine pleaded guilty in March before Judge Wade Faulkner charged her with one count of first-degree felony injury to a child – her daughter’s death.
Based on Law and Crime’s published article, following the three-day trial, McAlpine’s boyfriend, Jadine Nunez, was convicted of first-degree capital murder of a child under 10. He was sentenced to life in prison without any chance of parole. McAlpine wasn’t charged with charges until December 2020.