Staff report

GAINESVILLE, Fla. – Donrea Avril McLaughlin, 23, and Sean D. Lee, 28, have been sentenced to 30 years in prison, followed by five years of probation, after entering pleas of nolo contendere to charges of aggravated manslaughter of a child and child neglect with great bodily harm.

The pair were arrested in Atlanta in September 2023 after McLaughlin’s 3-year-old daughter died at a local hospital and have remained in the Alachua County Jail since they were transported there from Atlanta.

On Friday, September 1, 2023, GPD officers and EMS responded to the area of 4800 NW 43rd Street after a caller reported that a three-year-old child was not breathing. The child was transported to the hospital, where she was later pronounced deceased.

McLaughlin reportedly told the investigating officers that she had been napping for several hours and when she was awakened by Lee, her boyfriend, they found the child unresponsive.

However, further investigation revealed that McLaughlin and Lee had gone to work that day and had left the child and her young sibling alone and unsupervised for about eight hours. Detectives reported that the pair did not arrange for childcare and nobody even checked on the children during that time; the couple found the child unresponsive when they returned to the residence. The other child also reportedly received treatment at a nearby hospital the same night.

As detectives continued to investigate the incident, they reportedly found a history of prolonged abuse and neglect that contributed to the death of one child and injury to the other.

McLaughlin and Lee fled to Atlanta, where they were later arrested and transported to the Alachua County Jail.

The maximum sentence for the charges was 35 years in both cases, and each of them agreed to testify truthfully against the other as a condition of their pleas.