A Jefferson County District Court judge sentenced a 27-year-old woman to 18 years in prison Tuesday after severely abusing a child at her unlicensed home daycare. 

District Court Judge Chantel Contiguglia sentenced Mckinley Slone Hernandez on one count of child abuse — recklessly causing serious bodily injury following a seven-day trial in Jefferson County that ended with a guilty verdict on April 25, according to a news release from the First Judicial District Attorney’s Office.

Hernandez will also face a mandatory three years of parole following release.

The investigation into Hernandez began on Sept. 1, 2023 when she brought a 2-year-old boy to a nearby hospital with severe injuries, including a traumatic brain injury, brain bleeding, reduced oxygen and blood flow to the brain and a retinal hemorrhaging leading to tissue displacement behind the eyes, according to the release.

The child also had bruises indicative of abuse.

Lakewood Police Department investigators found that Hernandez was caring for the child at her home between Aug. 30 and Sept. 1, 2023.

Surveillance footage showed the child falling or being pushed from a camper trailer, immediately followed by Hernandez picking the child up and carrying him inside. Further video footage showed Hernandez bite the child’s arm as she entered her home.

The child became unconscious and unresponsive, but Hernandez didn’t leave for the hospital for nearly 30 minutes, according to the release.

Hernandez operated an unlicensed daycare at her home and had been taking care of the child “regularly” for over a year, the district attorney’s office said. Prosecutors argued that the injuries could not have only been from the fall off of the camper.

The child spent 32 days in the hospital, where he was “intubated, sedated, placed on and off a ventilator and fed through a tube,” the mother, Stefanie Reichert, said at the sentencing hearing.

He had to relearn basic functions like eating and breathing and will likely need long-term therapy and support.

“The possibility of playing sports, wrestling with his brothers, following in his father’s footsteps into the military — these are things that will never happen,” Reichert said. “Not because he didn’t want them, but because someone made a choice to take them away.”

“As a caregiver, your job, first and foremost, is to get that little boy help,” Judge Contiguglia said.

Hernandez could have received up to 32 years for the conviction, but Contiguglia cited Hernandez’s lack of prior criminal history, mental health history and her full compliance with pre-trial conditions when deciding on the sentence.