Travion Thompson, center, and Sahara Ervin, right, pleaded guilty to dumping the body of Ervin’s daughter, Maliyah Bass. (Image of Maliyah: Harris County District Attorney’s Office; mug shots: Houston Police Department)
In 2020, Travion Thompson gave an apparently emotional outburst to media cameras after his girlfriend’s daughter was found dead in a local bayou. He professed nothing but love to the late Maliyah Bass, 2.
“They have the nerve to get on Facebook and bash me and my girlfriend like we did something, and that’s my baby,” he said. “She know her ABCs. She know her 123s. She know her colors. She only 2.”
Now, more than three years later, the 25-year-old Thompson — also known in court records as Trevion Sanders — pleaded guilty in a Harris County, Texas, courtroom to dumping Maliyah in the storm drain that took her body to Brays Bayou, where her body was discovered. He will serve 40 years in prison for tampering with evidence — human corpse, and injury to a child resulting in serious bodily injury as well as an unrelated charge for aggravated robbery with a deadly weapon.
Harris County Public Affairs Officer John Donnelly told Law&Crime that Thomson was originally in court on Wednesday in a robbery case. He had been out on probation under a deferred prosecution. Authorities were planning to use the death case to argue he violated that probation.
Also, the child’s mother, Sahara Ervin, 24, had pleaded guilty to tampering with evidence — human corpse and injury to a child resulting in serious bodily injury. In return, she agreed to testify against Thompson.
“Basically, at the last second, he blinked,” Donnelly told Law&Crime of the sudden plea.
That paved the road for Ervin to be sentenced since authorities did not need her cooperation anymore. She was sentenced on Thursday to 20 years in prison.
“After three and half years, we were glad to reach a resolution in this case that let the family avoid a trial and ensure that Thompson will be in prison for decades,” Lacy Johnson, the lead prosecutor who worked with Assistant District Attorney Edward Appelbaum, said in a statement on Wednesday regarding the boyfriend’s sentencing. “He confessed to putting her body down a storm drain and that really sealed his fate.”
Maliyah was found in Brays Bayou a day after Ervin and Thompson reported her missing.
The couple, who lived in southwest Houston, claimed at first that she disappeared from a playground outside their apartment while they were inside cooking on Aug. 22, 2020.
Thompson later blamed Ervin, however, reportedly telling the cops that the mother beat Maliyah with a brush for not going to sleep. They put her in a closet, and she was dead when they woke up. In a 2021 jailhouse interview with Houston ABC affiliate KTRK, he had innocence to prove his innocence.
As far as authorities are concerned, they don’t know what truly happened to Maliyah — only that she was injured. Her caregivers simply pleaded guilty to hiding the body, Donnelly said.
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