A mother was sentenced Friday to 78 years in prison in the 2018 fatal shootings of her two daughters in a McLean, Va., apartment.
Veronica Youngblood, 38, was convicted of first-degree murder by a jury earlier this year in the killings of Sharon Castro, 15, and Brooklynn Youngblood, 5. Veronica Youngblood, who confessed to the crime hours after the killings occurred, pleaded at the time not guilty by reason of insanity.
“Mothers and fathers have many responsibilities, but nothing is more grave or important than keeping their children safe,” Fairfax County Circuit Court Judge Randy Bellows said during the sentencing hearing. “Tragically, their mother became the instrument of their death.”
Prosecutors had sought a life sentence, but a jury recommended Youngblood serve 78 years for the crimes. During the sentencing hearing Friday, Assistant Commonwealth’s Attorney Kelsey Gill asked Bellows to maintain the 78-year sentence, describing it as “the only sentence that reflects Ms. Youngblood’s actions, intentions and choices that day.”
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Prosecutors said Youngblood methodically killed her daughters at her apartment at 1519 Lincoln Circle as an act of revenge toward her former husband, Ron Youngblood. They said the shooting happened two days before the family was scheduled to move to Missouri, a decision made as part of a custody arrangement during the couple’s divorce. But authorities said Veronica Youngblood later decided she no longer wanted to leave Virginia.
During the trial, prosecutors said Youngblood bought a handgun nine days before the shooting with the purpose of killing her children. On the day of the slayings, authorities said Youngblood gave the girls sleeping pill gummies before she shot them.
Brooklynn Youngblood died at the scene after being shot in the head, authorities have said. Sharon Castro was shot once in the back and again in the chest, but she was able to call 911 and tell first responders that her mother had shot her. She was taken to a hospital, where she died.
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In a courtroom packed with attorneys and a teenage group of students Friday, Veronica Youngblood spoke about her relationships with her daughters and a lifetime of trauma. Authorities have previously said Youngblood, who is from Argentina, was a victim of physical and sexual abuse by family members. Youngblood became pregnant with Sharon at 16 and went into sex work to provide for her family, her attorneys said at the sentencing hearing. She married Ron Youngblood in 2009, who the defense team maligned as abusive.
“In my life, I have stumbled through great obstacles. But I have gotten up many times,” Veronica Youngblood said in Spanish during the Friday hearing. “I got up because I had responsibilities, like Sharon. I also had another responsibility, Brooklynn. But this time when I stumbled, I couldn’t get up. And now all I have is memories.”
Fairfax Chief Public Defender Dawn Butorac described the shootings as “a textbook case” of filicide, a technical term to describe incidents where a parent deliberately kills their children.
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“Feeling that the only way to protect your children is to do something that makes no sense, sending them to heaven,” Butorac said. “Veronica’s love for her children was undeniable.”
Butorac said that throughout the five years leading up to her client’s trial, Butorac had tried numerous times to work with prosecutors to plead out the case.
“Even if the jury did not believe she was insane, you cannot deny that mental health played a part in this case,” Butorac said, later adding, “You cannot ignore the trauma she had as a child. You cannot ignore the role of her marriage and her ex-husband.”
In an interview after the sentencing hearing, Ron Youngblood said that he wanted his former wife to be sentenced to life in prison for the girls’ killings, and that he had made it known to prosecutors that he did not want them to agree to less. He denied accusations that he was abusive and said he felt that Veronica Youngblood killed her daughters as an act of revenge toward him.
“It’s been well over five years since I lost my girls. I’ve come up with ways of coping, but I am never going to recover,” Ron Youngblood said. “I made those girls promises — I tried to raise them by example. But keeping them alive was the promise I couldn’t keep.”
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