A local couple recently avoided prison sentences for the deaths of two children nearly two years ago in the Southeast Rocky Mount area.
The children — a 1-year-old girl and her 3-month-old brother — died after their mother and her boyfriend left them in a car with the engine and heater on during a cool morning on April 23, 2022.
Zharia Noel and Ahmene Butler, both 23, pleaded guilty to two counts of involuntary manslaughter as part of an agreement with the District Attorney’s Office.
Generally, involuntary manslaughter is the killing of another person by recklessness or negligence.
The couple appeared early last month before Judge Alma Hinton in N.C. Superior Court in Edgecombe County and also pleaded guilty to two counts of felony child abuse resulting in serious bodily injury due to a willful act or a grossly negligent omission.
Hinton sentenced Noel and Butler each to a minimum of four years and two months to a maximum of seven years but suspended both sentences, the District Attorney’s Office said.
Hinton instead ordered Noel and Butler each to serve three years under supervised probation, the District Attorney’s Office said.
Hinton signed off on the judgements on March 6.
District Attorney Jeff Marsigli, in a phone interview Monday, said that he spoke many times with the prosecutor in the case, Assistant District Attorney Clare Weddle, and that one day he also sat in on a meeting with Weddle and family members of the victims — Amariah Noel and Kamryn Noel.
Marsigli said that he and Weddle agreed they thought this was more a case of bad parenting and a terrible accident than any kind of deliberate action.
Marsigli added, “Remember, we’re not out to throw everybody in prison. We’re out for justice in most cases — and we believe this was fair in this particular case.”
Attempts to reach attorneys representing the couple were unsuccessful.
Police Chief Robert Hassell, in an interview Monday, said that any loss of life is tragic.
Of the case involving the two children, Hassell said, “That was a horrific situation — and it is one of those situations that is preventable.”
According to Superior Court records, Noel and Butler, as a condition of not being imprisoned, both must pay court costs, make efforts to be gainfully employed full-time and submit a weekly report to the probation office.
The court records also state that Noel and Butler, as a condition of not being imprisoned, must obtain mental health assessments and comply with treatment.
An Edgecombe County grand jury on March 6, 2023, handed down indictments against Noel and Butler in the case.
Autopsy reports from the N.C. Office of the Chief Medical Examiner showed that the two children died of hyperthermia — that is, the condition of having a body temperature greatly above normal.
Emergency personnel at 9:21 a.m. April 23, 2022, responded to the 900 block of Drew Street about two unconscious children who had reportedly been sleeping in the back seat of their mother’s car.
The emergency personnel began performing cardiopulmonary resuscitation on the two children, who were subsequently taken to the local hospital.
According to the autopsy reports, despite aggressive attempts by personnel at the hospital, neither child could be resuscitated.
Butler had checked on the children roughly every three hours and would adjust the temperature in the car so the children were neither too cold nor too hot, the autopsy reports said.
According to the autopsy reports, the vehicle’s heater was on because the temperature outside was about 54 degrees.
The autopsy reports emphasized that children are vulnerable to heat due to their underdeveloped temperature regulatory abilities, which consequently impairs their ability to disperse heat.
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