MIAMI-DADE COUNTY, Fla. – A Miami-Dade registered nurse and foster mother accused of abusing her adopted daughters was found guilty Monday of first-degree murder and two counts of aggravated child abuse, nearly five years after the death of 7-year-old Samaya, one of the children in her care.
Gina Emmanuel, 56, showed no emotion as the verdicts were read aloud in court.
The verdict followed a short period of deliberation. Jurors began reviewing the case Monday evening and reached a decision before noon on Tuesday.
Noon report:
Ayanna Gordon, one of Emmanuel’s adopted daughters, now 18, testified during the trial about the repeated abuse and torture she and her sisters endured.
“I’m not gonna say it was easy,” she said. “It’s mentally exhausting, but it’s over, so it’s not fair that she took someone’s life. I mean they were a child, she was only 7, so it’s not fair.”
Prosecutors said Emmanuel subjected the girls — then 5, 7 and 12 — to “horrific conditions” inside her home on West Dixie Highway in northeast Miami-Dade.
That included chaining them, locking up food, forcing them to use a bucket as a toilet, burning their hands on a stove, whipping them with belts and denying them access to school and medical care, according to investigators.
“She kept her refrigerator chained. These three girls were forced to urinate and defecate in a bucket. they were malnurished, whipped. (They) didn’t see a pediatrician,” a state prosecutor said.
Samaya died from untreated pneumonia compounded by years of abuse, authorities said.
Emmanuel fostered the children before adopting them. She was arrested in October 2019 at the age of 50.
Her defense claimed that Emmanuel couldn’t have known how sick Samaya truly was and argued the abuse wasn’t entirely her fault. But the jury rejected that argument, returning three guilty verdicts.
The first-degree murder conviction carries a mandatory sentence of life in prison.
Emmanuel is scheduled to be sentenced on April 30, when the now 18-year-old survivor is expected to testify once again.
Read Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle statement regarding the verdict in Emmanuel’s trial: