Malisha Sasfras (DeKalb County Sheriff’s Office)
A 26-year-old mother in Georgia will spend the rest of her days behind bars for killing her 4-year-old son, torturing and beating the boy to death last year.
DeKalb County Superior Court Judge Tangela Barrie on Friday ordered Malisha Sasfras to serve a sentence of life in a state correctional facility plus an additional 20 years in the young boy’s brutal slaying.
A jury in May found Sasfras guilty on one count of felony murder, three counts of first-degree cruelty to children, and two counts of aggravated battery for her role in her son’s death.
The boy’s father and Sasfras’ codefendant, Javonte Harris, was indicted by a grand jury in May 2023 on charges of second-degree murder and second-degree cruelty to children.
Javonte Harris (DeKalb County Sheriff’s Office)
According to a news release from the DeKalb County District Attorney’s Office, emergency medical services personnel at about 4:30 p.m. on Feb. 11, 2023, responded to a call regarding an unresponsive child at an apartment complex located in the 2100 block of Candler Road in unincorporated Decatur, Georgia. The apartment complex is about 8 miles southeast of Atlanta.
Upon arriving at the scene, first responders located the victim and transported him to Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta (CHOA) where he was pronounced dead.
In an interview with police, Sasfras said that her son woke up earlier that morning and complained of having a headache before going back to sleep. That afternoon, she said that one of her other children got her attention, telling her that the 4-year-old would not get up and “was cold to the touch.” Sasfras said that she tried to rouse the boy by pouring water into his mouth, but was unable to get a reaction. She then called Harris, who convinced her to call 911.
At the hospital, the doctors and nurses who provided care to the victim told authorities they found “extensive injuries on the boy’s body.”
“He had multiple scars and bruises in different stages of healing, which indicated they happened over time,” the release states. “Some of the injuries were patterned in the shape of a belt or cord. The boy also had a scar around his neck that appeared to be a ligature mark, as well as blisters around his wrists, as if his hands had been bound. The four-year-old also had a severe injury to his face.”
A subsequent autopsy performed by the DeKalb County Medical Examiner’s Office determined that the 4-year-old’s manner of death was a homicide and the cause of death was blunt force trauma to the head. The medical examiner also found that the child had suffered the fatal injury about six to eight hours before he died.
Sasfras admitted that she was the only adult home at the time her son received the fatal head injury, but claimed to have no idea how it happened.
“While she admitted to ‘whooping’ her children sometimes, she did not provide any explanation for the multiple other injuries on her son’s body,” the release states.
Investigators obtained social media messages between Sasfras and Harris in which Sasfras “repeatedly discussed beating the four-year-old because he was wetting his bed or having accidents during the day.”
The state’s case against Harris remains pending, prosecutors said.
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