Left: Margaret Lehman. Right: Mark Brittian (Lake County Sheriff’s Office).
Two Florida parents are headed to prison for more than a decade after their 11-month-old daughter, who hadn’t been fed for days, died weighing just 13 pounds.
Lake County Judge Cary F. Rada sentenced 27-year-old Margaret Elizabeth Lehman to 13 years behind bars and 30-year-old Mark Edward Brittian Jr. to 13 years and three months in prison, the Fifth Judicial Circuit State Attorney’s Office said in a press release. Lehman and Brittian pleaded guilty to aggravated manslaughter in the death of Marcelyn Brittian.
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“This is disgusting, the most vulnerable of our society has been victimized by the most evil. At least in prison, they’ll both receive food, unlike their innocent child,” State Attorney Bill Gladson said in a statement.
According to a probable cause arrest affidavit, Leesburg police officers responded around 3:30 a.m. Sept. 2, 2021, to a call about an unresponsive infant. Paramedics rushed the infant to a hospital located just two blocks away but doctors pronounced the girl dead a short time later.
An officer who accompanied Marcelyn to the hospital noticed she was “covered in dirt and dried feces,” prosecutors said. Her palms and bottom of her feet could not be seen because they were so dirty. She had “severe bruising” on her lower back and buttocks, per police. Marcelyn also had sores on her upper thighs while her eyes and abdomen were “sunken.” Doctors noted that she weighed just 13 pounds, which is “extremely underweight and underdeveloped” for her age, the affidavit said.
Cops observed her home to be in “deplorable” condition. The initial responding officer said he “immediately encountered an overwhelming odor of garbage and rotting food” when he walked into the home. It was “almost as if hoarders resided there,” the officer noted. The playpen were Marcelyn had apparently been sleeping had no bedding.
Post-Miranda, Lehman and Brittian told detectives that they felt Marcelyn was “happy and healthy.” They said the girl had been running a fever and didn’t have much of an appetite in the days leading to her death. An autopsy later determined that the girl hadn’t eaten in two or three days. Lehman told cops Brittian “rarely” helped feed or change his daughter’s diapers. He also tested positive for cocaine.
Another child who was in the home at the time was placed into custody of family members.
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