Mum who Super-glued 2-year- old’s hands to wall and beat her to a comma gets 99 years in jail

A Dallas woman who beat her 2-year-
old daughter and glued the toddler’s
hands to a wall was sentenced Friday to
99 years in prison.
Elizabeth Escalona faced from probation
to life in prison, and prosecutors had
sought 45 years behind bars.
Family members in the courtroom
sobbed loudly as the judge announced
the 23-year-old mother’s punishment.
Escalona pleaded guilty in July to felony
injury to a child, but her mother and
sister had pleaded for leniency on her
behalf.
State District Judge Larry Mitchell said
she “savagely beat” her child and
deserved to be punished.
Escalona’s other children told
authorities that their mother attacked
Jocelyn Cedillo in September 2011 due
to potty training problems. Police say
she kicked her daughter in the stomach,
beat her with a milk jug, then stuck her
hands to an apartment wall with an
adhesive commonly known as Super
Glue.
Jocelyn suffered bleeding in her brain,
a fractured rib, multiple bruises and
bite marks, and was in a coma for a
couple of days, a doctor testified at the
sentencing hearing. Some skin had been
torn off her hands, where doctors also
found glue residue and white paint
chips from the apartment wall.
Prosecutors portrayed Escalona as an
unfit mother with a history of violence.
They played recordings in which
Escalona as a teenager threatened to kill
her mother. They said she was a former
gang member who started smoking
marijuana at age 11.
“Only a monster glues her daughter’s
hands to the wall,” Dallas County
prosecutor Eren Price said during the
hearing.
Escalona asked for leniency, telling the
judge she was no longer the monster
who committed the attack. “I will never
forgive myself for what I did to my own
daughter,” she said.
Dallas Police Sr. Cpl. Abel Lopez, who
interviewed Escalona after the attack,
showed in court a bottle of glue taken
out of the family’s apartment, as well as
a section of a wall with Jocelyn’s little
handprints.
Jocelyn has since recovered and is now
being cared for by her grandmother,
Ofelia Escalona, who is taking care of
her daughter’s four other children,
including a baby born this year.
Escalona’s family has acknowledged
their dismay and anger following the
attack, but her sister and her mother
asked the judge for leniency.
A counselor, Melanie Davis, testified
Wednesday that her sessions with
Escalona indicated the young mother
loved all five of her children and that
she would benefit from more
counseling. Davis said Escalona has set
herself the short-term goal of finding a
job and the long-term aim of getting her
children back.

NY Daily News