Monessen mom gets five years in infant's drowning death
A young Monessen mother whose infant son drowned in a bathtub last year while she danced in the street outside her home will serve at least five years in prison.
Seairia Henderson, 22, told a Westmoreland County judge Monday that her heart was broken by her actions Sept. 11 that ended with the death of her 7-month-old son, Malachi.
Henderson was convicted in May of third-degree murder for allowing her son to drown in the bathtub while she went outside to socialize with friends.
Police said she left Malachi and her 2-year-old daughter, AhRaeia, in an upstairs bathtub filled with water.
Henderson went outside for 20 minutes, where she talked with friends, smoked cigarettes and danced in the street, according to witnesses. When she returned, Malachi was underwater and unresponsive. He died two days later.
"I know that I walked away from my son. I have suffered every day with this. That was my last child. There isn't anything anyone can do to ease my pain," Henderson told Judge John Blahovec yesterday.
He ordered Henderson to serve a sentence of five to 10 years in prison, followed by another 10 years on probation. Blahovec prohibited Henderson from having any unsupervised contact with children.
Henderson faced a maximum sentence of up to 40 years, but Blahovec said he considered her mental deficiencies and imposed a more lenient penalty.
"At the time this happened you were so self-absorbed that you just forgot. I think you did something you will regret the rest of your life," Blahovec said.
The judge rejected a defense argument that Henderson's actions constituted "stupidity" rather than criminal behavior.
Defense lawyer Brian Aston argued that the boy's death resulted from Henderson's poor parenting choices rather than blatant disregard for his life.
Aston asked for a lenient sentence, arguing that Henderson is no longer a danger because she had a medical procedure to render her unable to have more children, and her surviving two children now live with their grandmother.
During the weeklong trial in May, Aston asked a jury to convict Henderson of a lesser charge of involuntary manslaughter, saying Malachi's death resulted from a reckless and negligent act.
"With a different jury I think we could get a different verdict with the exact same evidence," Aston said. "But I don't think it was a bad verdict. It was a verdict we can accept."
Jurors heard evidence of instances, dating to 2004, when Henderson was accused of mistreating her children or leaving them unattended. The Westmoreland County Children's Bureau intervened with the Henderson family in 2004 and again in 2008.
Two days before Malachi drowned, Henderson left her children alone in a bathtub. Her friends testified they found Malachi nearly submerged.
An investigation by the state Department of Public Welfare cleared the children's bureau of wrongdoing in how the agency handled its intervention with Henderson and her family.
