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Dixie Denise Villa and Abigail Lobisch (Hawaii News Now).
A woman who ran an unlicensed day care out of a Hawaii military base received the maximum sentence of 20 years in prison for fatally poisoning an infant, according to multiple reports. Jurors convicted the defendant, Dixie Denise Villa, of manslaughter in November.
“I’ll never hear her call me mama,” Anna Lobisch, the mother of 7-month-old Abigail, said Wednesday, according to The Military Times.
Authorities reportedly said that Villa had been running an unlicensed day care out of a home in the Aliamanu Military Reservation, a military base on the island of Oahu, despite officials shutting it down multiple times. All that ended tragically on Feb. 23, 2019. Abigail died from an overdose of diphenhydramine, an antihistamine that is the active ingredient of the drug Benadryl. Prosecutors said that children under the age of 6 should never get that medicine without a doctor’s orders.
“The amount of Benadryl found in the blood system of baby Abi shouldn’t be given to any minor, much less to a baby seven months old,” Judge Faaunga To’oto’o, according to The Navy Times. “Those are the facts in this case.”
On Wednesday, Anna Lobisch reportedly said that it had been more than 2,260 days since her baby’s death, and “all that time my heart has never stopped hurting. My life has been defined by grief and loss and the pain of living without Abi is a heavy weight I will carry every single day for the rest of my life until Abi and I are finally reunited.”
She reportedly said Villa showed no remorse.
Defense lawyer Megan Kau asked for probation. She argued that her client was not a danger to the public and said that Villa had two children, one of whom had special needs. Villa cannot care for the children from behind bars, she said.
“A probation sentence will reflect the seriousness of the offense and will promote respect for the law and will provide punishment for Ms. Villa,” Kau reportedly said.
Those two children are reportedly in the custody of Villa’s now-former husband, an active-duty sailor. Ultimately, the judge agreed with the prosecution’s demand for a maximum sentence.
