A South Los Angeles woman who pleaded no contest to first-degree murder for her 4-year-old daughter’s beating death was sentenced Tuesday to 25 years to life in prison.
Akira Keyshell Smith, now 38, said, “Hi babies. I love you all,” apparently addressing three of her sons after she was brought into the downtown Los Angeles courtroom.
Smith pleaded no contest Oct. 20 in connection with the Aug. 11, 2020, death of her daughter, Eternity.
Two other counts against Smith — torture and assault on a child causing death — along with allegations that she had prior convictions for assault with a deadly weapon in 2016 and injuring a spouse, cohabitant, fiance or boyfriend in 2014 were dismissed as a result of her plea.
“Based upon all the evidence, it appears that the defendant … murdered Eternity because she did not like or want a girl. She only had boys,” Deputy District Attorney Jonathan Hatami said after the sentencing. “The defendant continuously cussed at and demeaned Eternity. She felt that 4-year-old Eternity rolled her eyes at her too much, talked back too much, and opened her legs in a sexual manner too much. That day, Eternity accidentally urinated on herself, which angered the defendant.”
Speaking directly to the defendant during sentencing, the girl’s paternal grandmother, Rechetta Williams, said, “Eternity didn’t have a chance with you because you are a straight-up coward … You took the life of a defenseless baby. And yet you have no remorse.”
The girl’s paternal aunt, Michele Wedlow, also addressed Smith directly, telling her, “My soul left my body because you beat and murdered my only niece — an innocent 4-year-old baby. How dare you! That was pure evil.”
One of the girl’s half-brothers, who is now 20, told Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Richard Kemalyan that he wanted to talk about the good times he had with her.
“I just have a lot of good memories being around her,” he said.
The young man testified at a May 2022 hearing that his mother kept “slapping and slapping” Eternity that day, and that he also saw his mother choking his sister and “kicking her while she was on the floor.”
The young man — who said he told his mother to stop — told a judge that his mother eventually went to her room while he checked on his sister, who was on the floor in the hallway. He said he subsequently told his mother that the girl’s stomach was moving in a weird way.
“My mom told me to get her some food. She didn’t want any of it,” the girl’s oldest brother testified, adding later that his mother also told him to get some water for her.
“We called the ambulance to come and hurry up,” he said.
Another of the girl’s half-brothers, who was 10 at the time of last year’s hearing, said he didn’t remember so well what happened to her.
“What did you see your mom do? Was there hitting?” the prosecutor asked.
“Definitely hitting,” the younger boy testified, adding that he believed that there was also kicking and slapping as his sister cried.
When asked why he didn’t try to stop his mother, the boy responded, “What if I was next?”
The boy testified that the girl was “just laying there, not crying any more” and “wasn’t moving at all” after his mother stopped the attack.
He acknowledged that he would sometimes play-fight with the girl, and that she had fallen at one point from a bunk bed probably about a month earlier.
Defense attorney Kimberly Greene asked the boy if his mother would sometimes seem sad and whether he ever saw his mother taking medication. He responded that she sometimes seemed sad and that she had pills.
Matthew Holguin, a firefighter/paramedic with the Los Angeles City Fire Department, testified at the May 2022 hearing that the girl was pale, cold and wet when he responded to the home at about 5:12 p.m. that day, and that family members said they had poured water on the girl in an effort to wake her up.
“It just seemed very calm in the house,” Holguin told the judge, noting that he found it unusual under the circumstances.
Holguin said firefighters were informed by the mother that the girl was last seen walking in the hallway when she just collapsed. Paramedics tried unsuccessfully to revive the girl, who was rushed to the hospital and pronounced dead at 5:41 p.m. that night, Holguin testified.
When asked if he heard Smith saying, “Oh, God,” and repeating her daughter’s name, he said he wouldn’t describe her demeanor as emotional.
Los Angeles Police Officer Elizabeth Armendariz, who was summoned to the hospital, testified at the hearing last year that she observed the girl with multiple contusions to her face and “visible vomit in her hair and coming out of her mouth” after she had already been pronounced dead.
The officer said she subsequently spoke to the girl’s mother, who reported that she had put the girl in a time-out after she urinated on herself while in the garage.
The woman told police that she subsequently allowed the girl back into the house and heard her children playing together before one of her sons informed her that the girl had fallen, according to the officer.
Smith began to cry after being approached at the hospital and indicated that she thought people were trying to blame her for the girl’s death, the officer said under cross-examination by Smith’s attorney.
Lauren Diaz, an investigator with the Los Angeles County Office of Medical Examiner, testified last year that she spoke that day with the girl’s mother, who reported that it was stressful being the sole provider for her four children, including an infant son, and that she had regained custody of them in March 2020 after being released from prison.
The girl’s mother said she was under a doctor’s care for mental health, and that she initially believed that the girl had vomited for attention while in a time-out, the investigator told the judge.
Smith told the investigator that her children alerted her that the girl had collapsed or fallen, and that her middle son was known to play rough with the girl, according to the investigator.
Diaz said she saw the little girl’s body in the hospital, and described “numerous injuries” she saw after the girl had already been pronounced dead.
The girl died of blunt force to her torso in what the Medical Examiner’s Office categorized as a homicide.
Smith was arrested at 2:30 a.m. the following day by the Los Angeles Police Department’s Juvenile Division, and has remained behind bars since then.
Officers took three of the girl’s half-brothers into protective custody and released them to the Department of Children and Family Services, according to the LAPD. One is now an adult and the youngest two children are living separately, while another was already an adult at the time, according to the prosecutor.