Jason Delacerda was sentenced to death by the State of Texas for the murder of four year old Breonna Nichole Lofti
According to court documents Jason Delacerday and Breonna Nichole Lofti mother Amanda Guidry would beat the child over several months ultimately leading to her death. Breonna Nichole Lofti list of injuries included: bleeding on three parts of her brain, a spiral fracture in her leg, 12 broken ribs, marks from standing on bottlecaps, cigarette burns, bruises on her face, blisters from being paddled, pushpin piercings in her forehead and skull and two other major burns
Jason Delacerday would be arrested, convicted and sentenced to death
Amanda Guidry was found not guilty of murder and guilty of injury to a child and sentenced to 80 years in prison
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Jason Delacerda is incarcerated at Polunsky Unit
Jason Delacerda Case
In late 2010, B.L. lived with her grandmother, Wanda Bailey; her aunt, Samantha Bailey; and other family members. Wanda and Samantha took care of B.L. and had been involved in B.L.’s care since her birth. B.L. was a normal, healthy child who never had any serious injuries or illnesses. B.L.’s mother, Amanda Guidry, lived in the Bailey home “off and on.” Guidry began dating Appellant (Jason Delacerda) around December 2010. Shortly thereafter, Guidry moved in with Appellant. Around May 2011, Guidry took B.L. to live with her and Appellant (Jason Delacerda) in his trailer.
Guidry is Wanda’s daughter and Samantha’s sister.
After Guidry took B.L., Wanda and Samantha “stopped getting to see [her]” and they became concerned. In June 2011, Samantha visited her brother who lived across the street from Appellant (Jason Delacerda) . Samantha knocked on the doors and windows of Appellant’s trailer, but no one answered. Guidry eventually allowed Samantha inside Appellant’s home.
When Samantha entered the poorly lit trailer, she saw B.L. lying “on the recliner with a bag of ice on her head.” Samantha saw that B.L.’s “head was really swollen and black and purple and her eyes were like little slits.” B.L. had also suffered a broken leg. Samantha held B.L. with the bag of ice on her head for twenty to thirty minutes. B.L. would not stop crying. Appellant (Jason Delacerda) told B.L., “[I]f you don’t stop whining, don’t think you can’t be punished because your aunt is here.” Guidry assured Samantha that B.L. was “okay.” Guidry said that B.L. had “slipped” on the cast of her broken leg and that “that’s why her head was swollen.”
A week or two later, Samantha returned to check on B.L. This time Samantha brought her father, her boyfriend, and Wanda. When they knocked on the door, Guidry and Appellant (Jason Delacerda) “took awhile to answer.” When they entered the trailer, they found B.L. wrapped in covers in a back bedroom. Her head was the only visible part of her and “[i]t was still really swollen and black and purple looking.” Wanda and Samantha visited B.L. once more before her death. On this final visit, B.L. seemed to be doing a “little better.” She was “excited and talking about going to school.”
On August 17, 2011, the Hardin County Sheriff’s Office received a 9-1-1 call from a female caller at Appellant’s residence. At the beginning of the recording, a male voice exclaimed something unintelligible followed by, “God damn it!” The caller sounded anxious and was sobbing. She said her four-year-old daughter was not breathing. The male voice in the background said, “She had a broke leg and a head injury at one time. She’s been getting better. She’s had like a seizure or something — she’s not breathing.”
At 10:27 p.m. on August 17, paramedic Cassandra Walters was dispatched to Appellant’s trailer in response to the 9-1-1 call. Guidry flagged her down. As Walters entered the trailer, she saw a small girl wearing only underwear lying on a floor wet with water and ice cubes. Walters said it looked “[l]ike someone had spilled a drink.” Appellant (Jason Delacerda) was performing cardio-pulmonary resuscitation (CPR) on B.L. as the dispatcher instructed him over the phone. B.L. was not breathing and had no pulse. Walters observed that the child had suffered multiple burns and bruising to her legs and face. She was cold and pale and her lips were blue (“cyanotic”). Walters administered medications to try to start B.L.’s heart and attempted to revive her using a defibrillator, without success. Other paramedics arrived, and they transported B.L. to the hospital.
According to B.L.’s medical records, her cast had been removed on July 25, 2011.
Dr. Charles Owen treated B.L. in the emergency room at the hospital that night. B.L. was “clothed only in filthy underwear.” Owen said that “the general state of her body indicated multiple quite substantial injuries and trauma and wounds that were clearly sustained over a long period of time.” He spent about twenty minutes trying to get B.L.’s heart beating, but she had “no meaningful neurologic function.” B.L. was, “for all intents and purposes, dead when she came in and remained so.”
In treating B.L., Owen observed numerous injuries to the child’s body, including:
• Bruising, contusions, and injuries to her head "reflective of blunt force trauma";
• A wound above her left cheek that appeared to be a burn or caused by some type of "gouging or cutting";
• A wound over her left breast that appeared to be a healing cigarette burn which, Owen noted, was "a classic type of injury to a child";
• Another healing cigarette burn and multiple puncture wounds on her hand;
• "[I]njuries to the bottom of the feet, a pattern that . . . indicated that she had been walking on or scarred by bottle caps of some sort -- some rounded, pointed object";
• "[L]arge areas of what appeared to be healing burns on the top of one foot and . . . one of her thighs";
• "[M]ultiple rib fractures in various stages of healing";
• "[A] spiral fracture of the tibia[, ]" which Owen described as "indicat[ing] high risk for non[-]accidental injury"; and
• "[S]unken eyes, dark discoloration around the eyes, just indicative of . . . issues of nutrition and hygiene and general care." A radiological report in evidence documents rib fractures in twelve locations.
The prosecutor asked Owen whether, “[c]onsidering all of these injuries that we have gone over so far, would you state that these are accidental injuries, or would you state it’s intentional?” Owen responded:
Given the full context of all the information I had available to me, including her examination and subsequent discussions with the adults responsible for her care, it's unequivocal that this child was seriously abused over a long period of time; and these injuries are reflective of that abuse. Owen-an emergency room physician who had treated close to 150, 000 patients in his thirty-eight year career-said the abuse B.L. suffered was “[h]ead and shoulders above anything else I have ever seen in my entire career.” He said she was “subjected to a long repeated and obscene level of physical abuse. It was outside of my experience. It remains outside of my experience.”
Dr. Tommy J. Brown later performed B.L.’s autopsy. He noted that B.L. was four years old and weighed only thirty-two pounds. She had suffered hemorrhaging “at the back part of the head, the occipital-parietal area, the left temporal area, [and] the left frontal area.” Her head injuries involved “a large amount of granulation tissue,” which Brown described as “healing tissue from older injuries or within the last 24 hours to four or five days.” B.L.’s forehead had six puncture wounds, one of which pierced her skull and entered her brain cavity. She had hemorrhages beneath both eyes and one on her cheek. Brown also documented a large bruise to B.L.’s rib cage, multiple older rib fractures, a recent rib fracture, a large ulceration on her right thigh, cigarette burns, and a large burn on the top of her right foot. He said that the bruise on B.L.’s chest could not have been caused by CPR-related chest compressions. The bottoms of her feet contained circular injuries about one inch in diameter. Brown noted an injury on the back of B.L.’s left shoulder which looked like someone had sucked on B.L.’s skin “like a hickey.” In addition, Brown documented contusions on B.L.’s lips, missing skin on her nose, and other injuries to her face. Like Owen, Brown noted B.L.’s spiral leg fracture, which is usually “caused by twisting of the foot or the leg.”
Brown concluded that B.L.’s cause of death was “a non-accidental injury with blunt force trauma to the head.” When asked how he determined that the fatal injury was non-accidental, Brown responded, “All the signs I [saw] leading up to the cause of death [were] like the baby had been tortured or abused for a long period of time.”
Captain Gary Spears and Sergeant Mark Minton of the Hardin County Sheriff’s Office were dispatched to the hospital in the early morning hours of August 18, 2011. They examined B.L.’s body and noted her numerous injuries. They then interviewed Appellant (Jason Delacerda) and Guidry separately. Spears used a pocket audio recorder to record Appellant’s interview. Appellant (Jason Delacerda) said that B.L. “had a trembling incident about a month and a half to two months ago.” He explained that, at that time, they were outside on the trampoline, and B.L. “was acting bad — as usual like she does” and “she ended up bouncing off the trampoline and landing on the ground. Broke her leg. Hit her head.”
Guidry did not testify at trial, and her recorded statements were not admitted into evidence.
This Court received Appellant’s recorded statements in audio and/or audiovisual format only.
Appellant (Jason Delacerda) said they took B.L. to the hospital and the doctor told them that they “could expect swelling” and that there was “probably a slight concussion.” Appellant said that he and Guidry “kept ice on it — kept icing it down.” He said that they watched B.L. “[p]retty much at all times.” B.L.’s head “got better” but “probably about a week and a half, two weeks ago,” her head “swole right back up.” Appellant (Jason Delacerda) said they mentioned the swelling to the doctor when they took B.L. to get her cast removed, and the doctor told them that the swelling was normal. They continued to apply ice to B.L.’s head and bathe her in cold water, although they switched to warm baths when she started “acting funny.”
Appellant (Jason Delacerda) said that, at around 5:30 p.m. on August 17, he and Guidry were giving B.L. a warm bath when she started “acting funny again”:
[B.L.] was like, "no, no, no, no, no" . . . "Mm, mm, mm, mm." So we thought she was messing with us. . . . Sometimes she'd be stubborn like that. . . . She started leaning back and like trying to put her head in the water. . . . So I told her to stop. . . . [Guidry] grabbed her and got her out of the bathtub. . . . After it was all over with, she was acting fine. We had asked her, "was that all just to get out of the damn bathtub?" And she was like, "yes." . . . So we looked at each other and we were like, "Damn." Appellant (Jason Delacerda) told the officers that B.L. seemed fine from about 8:00 p.m. until around 10:00 p.m. when Guidry left for work, although she was “still kind of sluggish.” Shortly after Guidry left, “all of the sudden [B.L.] balled her fists up” and started “to come up in the air with them.” He said B.L. was making sounds again like, “nah, nah, nah, nah, nah.” He called Guidry and told her, “She is doing it again. I don’t know what the fuck is going on. Get here now.” He said he did not call 9-1-1 before Guidry got home because B.L. was still breathing and making sounds. He said that when Guidry got home, he picked up B.L., who was “still slightly breathing” and said, “We gotta go.” But Guidry told him to call 9-1-1, and he complied.