Te’Lea Jefferson (Leon County Jail).
A Florida woman will spend the rest of her days behind bars after she beat her girlfriend’s 3-year-old son to death with a tire iron and then waited over three hours to take him to the hospital after he likely had already died.
Te’Lea Jefferson, 28, pleaded no contest to first-degree murder and aggravated child abuse on Tuesday in the 2020 death of her girlfriend’s son, identified by local media as Miguel. The judge sentenced her to life in prison for the murder charge and 30 years in prison for the child abuse charge.
A probable cause arrest affidavit said Jefferson drove the boy to the hospital around 7 p.m. on Oct. 19, 2020. He was unresponsive with a body temperature of just 88 degrees and suffered “severe trauma” to his face and head. Doctors pronounced him dead minutes after arrival. Hospital staff then quickly called the Tallahassee Police Department.
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Jefferson, who lived with her girlfriend, Miguel and his 6-year-old sibling, claimed the boy was standing on the sink brushing his teeth when he fell and hit the toilet, causing the porcelain to shatter, the affidavit said. Cops noted at least six deep lacerations on his head and face, along with a nearly severed finger. Investigators determined the injuries were not consistent with a fall, as Jefferson had claimed. Cops also noted Miguel had injuries throughout his body in various stages of healing.
Post-Miranda, Jefferson told detectives she had watched Miguel all day while his mother was at work and his sibling at school. The sibling came home from school around 3:15 p.m. Some 20 minutes later, she told Miguel to brush his teeth. She went into the bathroom and saw that he was standing at the sink. Jefferson said she told him to get down and momentarily left the bathroom. That’s when she said he fell and hit the toilet. The lacerations were caused by the shattered toilet, she insisted.
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But cops confronted her about her timeline. Had she brought Miguel to the hospital immediately after he suffered his injuries, she would have arrived around 4 p.m., not 7 p.m. Investigators also told her the boy’s injuries were not consistent with a fall. That’s when she admitted to hitting him with a tire iron, the affidavit said.
She told cops she became angry when the boy refused to climb down from the sink. Jefferson grabbed the tire iron from a tool kit and threw it at him, hitting him in the side of the face. It also hit the toilet, which is what actually caused it to shatter, the affidavit said. She hit the boy a total of three or four times, she said.
“She recalled seeing blood spray from [Miguel’s] wounds as she struck him,” detectives wrote.
Jefferson also admitted the boy was “likely deceased” when she took him to the hospital.
Cops arrested Jefferson and she’s been in jail ever since. Prosecutors had been seeking the death penalty before the plea deal.
Authorities determined that Miguel and his sibling were subjected to prior abuse. The Department of Children and Families took custody of the sibling.
