Insets, top to bottom: Sophia Mason and Samantha Johnson (Merced County District Attorney). Background: Cops investigate after finding Sophia's body in a bathtub in 2022 (KFSN).
A 34-year-old California woman will spend more than a decade behind bars for forcing her 8-year-old daughter to live in a shed before the child died, then leaving her body to decompose in a bathtub for months.
Samantha Johnson pleaded no contest to manslaughter and two counts of child abuse in the death of her daughter Sophia Mason. As part of a plea deal, prosecutors dropped the murder charge. A judge on Thursday sentenced Johnson to 15 years and 8 months in prison.
Authorities found Sophia dead in a bathroom on March 11, 2022, in Merced, which is roughly 50 miles northwest of Fresno. Authorities found Sophia's decomposing body after she was reported missing.
Johnson was arrested immediately, while her boyfriend Dhante Jackson was taken into custody about six months later. He was facing the same charges but he pleaded guilty last October to a lesser charge. He was released from jail with credit for time served.
The San Jose Mercury News reported Johnson left Sophia with family members shortly after the girl's birth. Her grandmother raised her until Johnson came back into picture in 2021 and took back custody to her. For the next 15 months, there were at least seven reports of Sophia being abused, however social services workers declined to intervene or even alert cops, which violated California law, the Mercury News reported.
"This isn't justice," Sophia's aunt Emerald Johnson wrote in a victim impact statement, per the Mercury News. "Sophia didn't get to live her life. Her life was cut short. [Samantha] and Dhante both deserve to rot in prison for the rest of your lives."
The aunt concluded: "But regardless of these sentences, I know that God has the last say for you both. You will get the karma that you truly deserve."
Lynn Linnen, another of Sophia's aunts, had a frank assessment of the defendant's parenting skills.
"You failed," Linnen told her, the Mercury News reported. "Instead of protecting her, you allowed her to suffer and die."
As Law&Crime previously reported, Sophia was forced to live in a shed in the backyard of her home in the final months of her life.
According to the Merced Sun-Star, Johnson told investigators that the last time she saw her daughter alive was on Feb. 10, 2022.
On that day, she took Sophia out of the shed to clean the feces covering her body, according to the report.
Johnson then left the girl alone in a bathroom with Jackson, the man she knew was abusing her daughter both physically and sexually at the time, authorities reportedly claimed.
She reportedly told investigators that soon after, she heard a "thud."
The next day, a sliding door was left open in the home, reports the Merced Sun-Star, and Johnson assumed her physically weakened daughter had gone out on her own.
Johnson stated that she believed that Sophia had run away.
This scenario is most parents' worst nightmare, but Johnson refused to search for her daughter or report the girl missing.
"Jackson told Johnson that your daughter does not want to be with you and does not want to be your daughter anymore. Johnson stated that Jackson told her this, so that is the reason why she stopped looking for [Sophia]," reads the report.
Police officers discovered Sophia's body exactly one month after Johnson last saw her daughter.
After days of searching for Sophia in response to an at-risk missing juvenile report, officers with the Hayward Police Department said they finally located the residence where Johnson was living with Jackson.
Hayward police officers say they faced one more hurdle when Johnson and Jackson refused to answer the door, so they waited until Johnson left home.
"On Mar 10, 2022, as detectives continued their investigative efforts, it was determined probable cause existed to arrest Johnson for corporal injury on a child," HPD wrote in a press release. "Detectives also received information Johnson may be at an address in Newark. Hayward PD Officers responded to the area, located Johnson, and took her into custody."
MPD then obtained a search warrant for the home where Johnson and Jackson were living with Sophia, where authorities discovered the missing girl.
Chris Spargo contributed to this report
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