DENVER — A woman who admitted to beating her 8-year-old great-nephew to death with a wooden back scrubber was sentenced to 36 years in prison on Monday afternoon in Denver District Court.
Susan Baffour, 63, was also sentenced to five years of mandatory probation. She had faced 16 to 48 years in prison after pleading guilty to child abuse resulting in death last month. She agreed to that charge in a plea deal that let her avoid being tried for first-degree murder.
But Dametrious Wilson's death, Denver District Judge Alex Myers said, "is not a 16-year sentence kind of case."
Baffour, who had been awarded parental rights over Dametrious and his sister in 2017 after the kids were removed from their mother's custody, had beaten the boy and then driven him to a Home Depot, where she bought duct tape she used to bind his hands and feet and cover his mouth. Then she beat him again, and the next day he stopped breathing.
"Miss Baffour killed a defenseless child -- actually forced him to go with her to get supplies for his own beating, which I find particularly egregious, and then tied him up," Myers said. "… It’s a horrific case, a horrific circumstance, made even worse by the fact that his sister was there to witness it.”
The sentence came at the end of an emotional sentencing hearing, punctuated by testimony from Dametrious' now-11-year-old sister, Noelle White.
"Hi, my name is Noelle," she told Myers after stepping to the microphone. "I am the sister of Dametrious, and I just want to say that he was my best friend. He put a smile on my face, no matter if we were in trouble or not. He always would play with me -- even if he didn’t want to play -- because he loved me and he cared about me. And I loved him as well. And what she did – I don’t think I can forgive her, because I was there ..."
She broke down crying, then gathered herself and continued: "Deserves forever in jail. That is all I have to say."
Prosecutor Daniel Cohen pointed out that Dametrious had welts over 40% of his body -- and recounted the trip to Home Depot.
"She did that so that she could tape his ankles together so he couldn’t run away, and so she could tape his wrists together so he couldn’t fight back, and to cover his mouth so that he couldn’t cry for help that he so desperately needed," Cohen said.
One of Baffour's attorneys argued that she took responsibility immediately, answered all questions posed by police detectives, and accepted a plea deal within 10 days of it being offered.
“This isn’t someone who is putting on a show for the court to try to get a merciful sentence," attorney Victoria Eldsmo said. "… I don’t think we can overstate about how deeply, deeply sorry she is for what happened here.”
Baffour told police she was trying to discipline Dametrious. Her attorneys played body camera footage of police officers telling Baffour that Dametrious' injuries were severe.
"He's alive, right?" she asked, wailing and crying.
They also played a clip of an interview with police. In it, Baffour said, "I don’t want him to be dead. I never killed anyone. I never killed anyone. Let the child breathe. … I just wanted to get him to act right. That’s it.”
Before issuing the sentence, Myers said he saw mitigating factors in some of Baffour's conduct.
“I do see remorse," he said. "I do see she did not try to kill Dametrious. She has held herself accountable.”
But none of that outweighed the horror of the killing, he said.
In the year before his June 2022 death, Dametrious missed 60 days of school, prompting teachers at Ashley Elementary in Denver to report their fears that the boy was being abused. Those reports were screened out without any follow-up.
Baffour reported 52 of those absences for Dametrious and his sister, listing illness, injury, family business – and sometimes nothing – as the reason.
Police first got involved after Baffour called 911 on June 3, 2022, reporting that Dametrious wasn’t breathing. He died the same day.
Baffour acknowledged to police that she’d spanked him the night before – but later admitted hitting him repeatedly with a wooden back scrubber, according to court documents.
> Video below aired in May: Family navigates Denver Human Services after Dametrious Wilson's death:
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