A Texas mother has been sentenced after abandoning her three children to live with their eight-year-old brother's decomposing remains.
According to PEOPLE, 38-year-old Gloria Williams was sentenced to 50 years in prison after pleading guilty to two charges of injury to a child in connection to the killing of her son, Kendrick Lee.
Williams' sentencing comes after her husband, Brian Coulter, 34, was sentenced in April to life in prison without parole for beating the boy to death in 2020.
“We expect parents to protect their children, not hurt them, because children really are our most vulnerable victims,” Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg said in a statement. “This case shocks the conscience not just because a child lost his life, but because of his parents’ complete and total disregard for human life.”
During Coulter's trial, Lee's siblings said they saw him repeatedly beating the eight-year-old. Coulter covered the boy's body after he died in 2020, and he and Williams moved into a different apartment while the surviving siblings stayed behind.
Williams' 15-year-old son called police in October 2021 to report that his brother "had been dead for a year and his body was in the room next to his."
"The apartment was in a horrible condition. We saw soiled carpet, no furniture at all. No bedding, no blankets that we could see. We saw roaches and flies and a very bad condition for anyone to live in," Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez previously said.
As part of Williams' plea agreement, the mother requested her children not have to testify again about the death.
“By pleading guilty and waiving the right to a jury trial, the defendant finally acted like a protective mother,” prosecutor Edward A. Appelbaum said in a statement. “For one day of her children’s lives, she was a good mother.”
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