Virginia Gonzales (City of Austin/Austin Police Department).
A Texas mother who kept her 7-year-old daughter locked away in a dark closet — giving her a corn dog a day and half a cup of water to drink — due to her "always getting into stuff" and bladder issues is headed to prison.
Virginia Gonzales, 33, of Del Valle, was sentenced to 25 years in prison this week after she pleaded guilty to charges of felony child injury.
"We hope that by Ms. Gonzales agreeing she is guilty, accepting 25 years of incarceration, and waiving her right to appeal it is the first step to the victim's road to recovery," the Travis County District Attorney's Office told local NBC affiliate KXAN in a statement. "No child should ever have to go through what the victim did."
The plea deal comes after Gonzales' lawyer, Gabe Hernandez, turned down an offer that would have seen her sentenced to 40 years behind bars.
"Utterly absurd," Hernandez told KXAN about the offer in November.
Gonzales — who police say has another kid that's been missing since 2017 — was scheduled to go on trial next week. She was originally charged with causing serious bodily injury to a child after her daughter was found soiled and severely malnourished following several weeks inside the closet. The girl, who weighed just 29 pounds, was reportedly found by her grandmother at the mother's residence in Austin.
Gonzales was accused of ordering the girl's six siblings to keep her locked inside the small space, which is approximately 3 feet by 1 foot, 10 inches, police said. The children range in age from 2 to 14; they allegedly told their grandmother that the girl was being punished by Gonzales for "getting into stuff" and eating things she was "not supposed to," according to police.
The victim's brother, who is 10, said the girl was only allowed to eat "one corn dog a day and half a cup of water a day," according to Gonzales' arrest affidavit. She allegedly defecated and urinated inside the closet. Austin Police Department Child Abuse Unit detective Ryan Constable described her condition in court.
"The fat in her cheeks was nonexistent," he said. "Her body had used those stores to sustain itself."
During a July 2025 court hearing, Gonzales alleged that she wanted to "fight" for her kids and prove that she deserved to have them in her life, according to KXAN. She claimed she "never spanked them" and did "nothing" to harm them physically.
"I'm ready to do whatever I need to keep my children," Gonzales said.
"I know what I've done was wrong," she told the court, while appearing to hurl the blame at her other kids for the alleged mistreatment.
"I instructed them not to let her out of the [bed]room but not the closet," she said, per KXAN. "We'd catch her in the restroom doing something bad. It was easier for [my sons] to watch her that way."
Austin cops have placed the children in protective custody as they continue to look for Gonzales' missing child, Ava Marie Gonzales, who disappeared in 2017 when she was 9 years old.
The DA's office told KXAN that it will "continue to work with APD to seek justice for the missing baby."