A 56-year-old former registered nurse and foster mother from South Florida will spend the rest of her life in prison for killing her 7-year-old adopted daughter by beating, starving, and torturing her to death, nearly forcing the victim’s siblings to suffer the same fate.
Gina Emmanuel was found guilty on one count of first-degree premeditated murder by a Miami-Dade County jury on Tuesday, according to records reviewed by Law&Crime.
Emmanuel was also found guilty of two counts of aggravated child abuse for his treatment of Samaya’s siblings, who were 5 and 12 years old at the time of her death. Emmanuel initially fostered all three children before formalizing their adoption.
“The guilty verdict in Gina Emmanuel’s first-degree murder and child abuse trial brought to light the horrors 7-year-old Samaya so tragically endured before her death,” Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle said in a statement following the verdict. “No one could have imagined that a trained nurse would beat, torture, and starve Samaya and her two adopted sisters to instill the defendant’s vision of discipline. The jury fully understood that she ultimately ignored young Samaya’s suffering, which resulted in her death.
Emmanuel subjected her children to various forms of torture, including forcing them to eat human feces, intentionally burning them on the stove, chaining them in chairs, physically abusing them, and withholding food and water, according to Miami NBC affiliate WTVJ.
According to the report, Emmanuel’s now-18-year-old adopted daughter testified emotionally about the horrors she and her sisters experienced at the hands of their foster mother during the three-day trial, which concluded Monday evening.
“She would chain us, have us lay down, and chain and lock us until she got back,” the daughter reportedly told jurors.
“One should admire the courage it took for Samaya’s sister, 12-years-old at the time of the abuse, to come forward and testify in court, before judges, lawyers, jurors, and others in order for the truth to be told,” Rundle told the audience. “The prosecution team of Assistant State Attorneys Cristina Diamond and Kristen Rodriguez deserve congratulations for performing a superb job of bringing all the distressing evidence and testimony to the attention of the court and the jury.”
During the trial, prosecutors claimed that Emmanuel was obsessed with controlling every aspect of her daughters’ lives and enforced her rules through heinous abuse, according to Miami-based ABC affiliate WPLG.
“You will learn about the defendant’s control during this trial,” prosecutors reportedly said during opening statements. “You will hear that she kept her refrigerator chained. The three girls were forced to urinate and defecate in a bucket. They were malnourished, whipped, and did not visit a pediatrician. “What else would happen as a result of her decisions?”
Emmanuel’s defense attorney reportedly claimed that the registered nurse used “reasonable corporal punishment” that did not constitute child abuse, and that Samaya’s death was primarily due to untreated diabetes.
Should she have taken the child to the hospital? Yes, absolutely, but it was not murder. “It was not child abuse,” her attorney reportedly told the jury.
Emmanuel is scheduled to return to court on April 30 for her sentencing hearing. She faces a mandatory life sentence in a state correctional facility without the possibility of parole.
