A Florida woman, Te’Lea Jefferson, 28, has been sentenced to life imprisonment after pleading no contest to charges of first-degree murder and aggravated child abuse. The charges stem from a 2020 incident where Jefferson fatally assaulted her girlfriend’s 3-year-old son, Miguel, with a tire iron. She then delayed taking the child to the hospital for over three hours, by which time he had likely already passed away.
The court heard that Jefferson drove the unresponsive child to the hospital around 7 p.m. on October 19, 2020. The boy’s body temperature was a mere 88 degrees, and he had suffered severe trauma to his face and head. He was pronounced dead shortly after arrival, prompting hospital staff to contact the Tallahassee Police Department.
Jefferson, who lived with her girlfriend, Miguel, and his 6-year-old sibling, initially claimed that the boy had fallen and hit the toilet while brushing his teeth, causing the porcelain to shatter. However, the police noted multiple deep lacerations on his head and face, along with a nearly severed finger. These injuries, along with others in various stages of healing throughout his body, were inconsistent with a fall.
Jefferson later admitted to detectives that she had been caring for Miguel while his mother was at work and his sibling was at school. She claimed that the boy fell and hit the toilet after she told him to get down from the sink and left the bathroom momentarily. She insisted that the lacerations were caused by the shattered toilet.
However, her timeline was questioned by the police. If she had taken Miguel to the hospital immediately after his injuries, they would have arrived around 4 p.m., not 7 p.m. Faced with this inconsistency and the fact that the boy’s injuries did not align with a fall, Jefferson confessed to hitting him with a tire iron.
She told the police that she had become angry when Miguel refused to climb down from the sink. She grabbed a tire iron from a toolkit and threw it at him, hitting him in the side of the face. The tire iron also hit the toilet, causing it to shatter. She admitted to hitting the boy three or four times in total.
Jefferson also confessed that she believed Miguel was already deceased when she took him to the hospital. She was arrested and has remained in jail since. Prior to the plea deal, prosecutors had been seeking the death penalty.
The Department of Children and Families has since taken custody of Miguel’s sibling, following the determination that both children had been subjected to prior abuse.