Mom Who Left Toddler Alone In Playpen While She Went On Vacation Gets Life Sentence

A Cleveland woman who pleaded guilty to aggravated murder after leaving her toddler home alone in a playpen while she went on a 10-day vacation was sentenced Monday to life in prison without parole.

A judge found that Kristel Candelario, 32, had committed “the ultimate act of betrayal” when she left her 16-month-old daughter, Jailyn Candelario, in a playpen, “trapped in a tiny prison,” while she traveled to Puerto Rico and Detroit last June.

“Just as you didn’t let Jailyn out of her confinement, so too you should spend the rest of your life in a cell without freedom,” Judge Brendan Sheehan told Candelario in handing down the sentence.

Forensic pathologist Elizabeth Mooney determined Jailyn died from starvation and severe dehydration due to pediatric neglect and ruled Jailyn’s death a homicide.

Candelario also pleaded guilty to child endangerment.

In the sentencing hearing Monday, which was livestreamed by Cleveland news station WKYC, prosecutors played security video of Candelario leaving her home on June 6 with a suitcase and returning on the morning of June 16. About 10 minutes later, authorities said, Candelario called 911, saying that her daughter was dying.

Prosecutors said Candelario redressed her daughter in clean clothes before first responders arrived, but Mooney said in court that she found feces on Jailyn’s hands and feet, under her fingernails and on her mouth and teeth — which investigators said they initially believed was dirt.

Mooney’s voice quivered as she described the “terrifying” circumstances of the toddler’s death, saying Jailyn experienced extreme and prolonged suffering for as long as a week before she died.

Candelario, a former substitute teacher, initially told investigators that she had been