Alabama Mom Sentenced to Life in Prison for Suffocating 4-Year-Old Daughter with Pillow

(The AEGIS Alliance) – ATHENS, ALABAMA –  A woman from Athens, Alabama has been handed down a life prison sentence for murdering her 4-year-old daughter in 2016.

Stephanie Diane Smith is sentenced to prison for life but it’s possible for her to get parole. She gave a guilty plea to the suffocation of her 4-year-old daughter Zadie Wren Cooper. Smith’s original charge was capital murder but instead of waiting for a jury trial, she pleaded guilty to felony murder, WHNT reports.

On July 4, 2016, Athens Police received an emergency 911 call on July 4, 2016, from Smith who reported that her daughter wasn’t breathing. Investigators at the time said Smith told them she heard something on the baby monitor, then discovered the child between the wall and bed, and was not breathing.

Months went by, and in October 2016, she explained the same account of events to the Department of Human Resources and investigators, The News Courier reported. Stephanie Diane Smith went into the Athens Police Department on April 13, 2017, and gave a confession to the smothering death of her daughter nine months prior.

Smith told police she suffered from a mental health condition and hadn’t been taking her medication in the days that led up to the girl’s murder. Smith made the claim that she blacked out, and then when she took the pillow off of 4-year-old Zadie Wren Cooper’s face, the child didn’t appear to be breathing, according to a report by The News Courier.

Kyle James Lee – The AEGIS Alliance – This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.