Background: Prisma Health Children’s Hospital in Columbia, S.C., where Hope Fields died in 2024 (Google Maps). Inset (left): Wilbur Fields (Richland County Detention Center). Inset (right): Hope Fields (Richland County Sheriff’s Office).
A South Carolina man will spend decades in prison for the fatal punishment he inflicted on his 4-year-old daughter.
Wilbur Fields, 35, was sentenced to 50 years in prison on March 3, just over a year after he was charged with the murder of his 4-year-old daughter Hope Fields. In February 2024, Fields and his wife Fifi Hill-Fields, 32, were both arrested after bringing their daughter to the hospital with first-degree burns. Hope was reportedly unresponsive when she arrived and spent two days on life support before succumbing to her injuries, according to reporting at the time by WJBF, a local ABC affiliate.
Fields admitted to investigators that he had punished Hope for having an accident in her pants by submerging her in scalding hot water.
