A lady from North Carolina faces multiple years in prison after abandoning her young girls in a scorching car, allowing them to burn for almost six hours as she gambled at an online casino.
Launice Shanique Battle was sentenced to 94 months (less than eight years) to 125 months (roughly 10 1/2 years) in a state correctional facility on Thursday by Wake County Superior Court Judge Rebecca W. Holt for the 2022 hot car deaths of 2-year-old Trinity Milbourne and 3-year-old Amora Milbourne, according to court records.
Battle and the prosecution came to an agreement whereby she would admit guilt to one count of second-degree murder related to the deaths of the children.
This led to the imposition of the sentence. She faced a possible sentence of more than 80 years in jail when she was first charged with two charges of criminal murder. According to court documents, Holt gave Battle credit for 667 days already completed.
Records indicate that in imposing Battle’s sentence, the court determined that there were no mitigating elements that may have resulted in a longer sentence, but rather that Battle’s willingness to “accept responsibility” for her “criminal conduct” was a mitigating factor. As a result, the court concluded that “a mitigated sentence is justified.”
On August 27, 2022, at approximately 9:38 p.m., members of the Raleigh Police Department were called to the Duke Raleigh Hospital, located in the 3400 block of Wake Forest Road, in reference to the apparent deaths of two little children, subsequently identified as Amora and Trinity. That night, the girls were both declared dead, and the next morning, Battle was brought into arrest.
The cause of death for both girls, according to the county medical examiner’s autopsy, was hyperthermia, which occurs when the body produces or absorbs more heat than it can expel.
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“On 8/27/2022, she [Amora] and her 2-year-old sibling [Trinity] were reportedly left in a vehicle parked behind a gambling establishment from approximately 1430 hours to 2030 hours (6 hours),” according to WECT. “It was parked in a possibly partially shaded area. Documented weather for that time was hot, with a high temperature 95 degrees Fahrenheit with skies varying from partly to mostly cloudy with some light rain. Her mother found them unresponsive and drove them to Duke Raleigh Emergency Department.”
The study also revealed that the girls were in the early stages of “mild [body] decomposition” and had “no body temperature” when they were discovered.
But according to documents obtained by The News & Observer from the Wake County Department of Health and Human Services, Child Protective Services launched three separate investigations into Battle between 2019 and 2022—the most recent of which was conducted less than two months before the girls passed away.
