logo
Woman gets life without parole for murder of 2-year-old

Woman gets life without parole for murder of 2-year-old

Yahoo04-04-2025
(PUEBLO, Colo.) — A Pueblo woman has been sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole in connection with the death of her 2-year-old child in 2023, according to the 10th Judicial District Attorney's (DA) Office.
On March 13, a jury found 25-year-old Mythia Latka guilty of first-degree murder of a child under twelve by one in a position of trust. On March 31, Latka was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
PREVIOUS COVERAGE: Mother arrested after two-year-old dies at hospital
'The verdict is truly the result of teamwork, including the dedication and hard work of law enforcement, the medical community, our prosecution team, and the community,' said 10th Judicial DA Kala Beauvais. 'Any case involving a child victim is emotionally taxing, and the District Attorney's Office remains committed to seeking justice for all victims. This bit of justice for this young victim is especially meaningful as April is Child Abuse Awareness Month.'
Officers with the Pueblo Police Department originally responded to a hospital on Jan. 31, 2023, on reports of an unresponsive child. Detectives executed a search warrant on the home where the child lived with their mother, Latka, on the east side of Pueblo. While on scene at the home, detectives learned the child had died of their injuries at the hospital.
Further investigation led to Latka being arrested on charges of child abuse causing death.
Following an 11-day trial, the DA said the jury deliberated for four days before ultimately finding Latka guilty in a unanimous verdict.
Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Orange background

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Comments

No comments yet...

Related Articles

Manhattan DA quietly pulls data dashboard amid slipping convictions
Manhattan DA quietly pulls data dashboard amid slipping convictions

New York Post

time5 hours ago

  • New York Post

Manhattan DA quietly pulls data dashboard amid slipping convictions

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg's conviction rate has plunged every year since he took office — and he's hiding the ugly numbers from the public, The Post has learned. Just 35% of felony cases – 6,871 out of 19,602 crimes – ended in convictions last year, down from 37% in 2023, 40% in 2022, and 42% in 2021 before Bragg took office, according to data from the state Division of Criminal Justice. And those numbers are way down from 2019, the last year before New York's woke discovery reform laws took effect, when 64% of felonies resulted in convictions. Advertisement 4 Alvin Bragg's conviction rate has fallen every single year since he took office. Steven Hirsch Even when the Democratic prosecutor's office did win a conviction, 66% of the time it was a charge downgraded to a misdemeanor or even a non-criminal violation. And the number of felony cases Bragg simply refused to prosecute has nearly doubled since he took over – from 7% in 2022, to 8% in 2023 and 12% in 2024. Advertisement Bragg ordered prosecutors to stop seeking prison for hordes of crimes including armed robberies and drug dealing in his Day 1 memo. 'These outcomes are by design,' Rafael Mangual, legal fellow at the Manhattan Institute, told The Post. 'Bragg's philosophy is that incarceration should be the last resort. And he won't even pursue prison terms beyond 20 years, irrespective of the offense.' Mangual says Bragg fails to acknowledge that 'prison is where we get the public safety benefits – because individuals who are currently engaged in criminal conduct are going to be taken out of commission.' 4 Felony conviction rates have dropped and refusals to prosecute have risen since Bragg took office. NY Post Design Advertisement Misdemeanor convictions are tanking too, plummeting from 24% in 2022, to 21% in 2023 and 17% in 2024, records show. Bragg declined to prosecute 9% of misdemeanors in 2022, then 19% in 2023 and 31% in 2024, according to the data. But the public would never know any of this because the DA's office quietly yanked the data dashboard from its website. 4 The data page of the Manhattan DA's website has been 'under construction' since the fall. Advertisement It's been 'under construction' since October. 'They hid it knowing that DA Bragg is going to be up for re-election,' slammed outraged West Village resident Scott Evans. 'They're hiding behind the curtain of 'there's no data to talk about.' ' Evans says he's pressed Bragg's representatives about the missing page at community meetings – only to be told they don't want the public to 'misinterpret the data.' A spokesperson for Bragg told The Post he's working with the other boroughs' DA's on how to present the data, without adding more specifics. 4 A screenshot of the Manhattan DA's data page taken on September 25, before it was taken down. Scott Evans Before it was pulled, the DA's office touted its data dashboard as 'groundbreaking.' 'The Manhattan DA's office is committed to enhancing transparency in the criminal justice system,' the website boldly used to claim. 'Our data dashboard, the first in New York State, provides the public with comprehensive data about our office's prosecutions.' Case data was updated weekly. Advertisement 'This is exactly the wrong time to take that tool away from the public, as we come into an election year and they try to evaluate whether that's the direction they want the DA's office be moving,' said Mangual.

Luigi Mangione has an issue with another health insurance company — and it's not UnitedHealthcare
Luigi Mangione has an issue with another health insurance company — and it's not UnitedHealthcare

Business Insider

time14 hours ago

  • Business Insider

Luigi Mangione has an issue with another health insurance company — and it's not UnitedHealthcare

Lawyers for the accused United Healthcare CEO killer, Luigi Mangione, are up in arms over what they say were "secret" communications between his New York prosecutors and Aetna, his former health insurer. They say prosecutors sent Aetna an "unlawful," back-channel subpoena seeking his confidential insurance account number and the time period for his coverage — and that in response, Aetna mistakenly sent prosecutors Mangione's entire, 120-page insurance record. This "trove of protected medical information" includes "different diagnoses as well as specific medical complaints made by Mr. Mangione," his lawyers complained in a court filing Thursday night. New York prosecutors should never have had access to these private records, his lawyers contend. And they should never have looked at them once receiving them, they also argue. Aetna emailed the records to the Manhattan District Attorney's Office on June 12, in four files, with a cover letter advising "confidential." Each file was separately labeled "in large-type bold letters 'Request for Protected Health Information," the lawyers wrote. "It would be impossible for anyone to view a single page of these records and not immediately see that they were private, confidential medical records within the scope of HIPAA," the federal Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, the lawyers wrote. The sheer volume of Aetna's response should have alerted prosecutors that "the unlawful subpoena they served on Aetna resulted in far more material than they requested," the lawyers wrote. But instead of immediately sending the materials to the judge and the defense — where they should have been directly sent, as required by law — the DA's office says it downloaded them into an internal "discovery file," the lawyers wrote. The lawyers say prosecutors "sat on this information" for 12 days, until June 24, when they sent the judge and defense team an email forwarding the four files. Prosecutors have told Mangione's lawyers that in the interim, they had reviewed the records, but not "in their entirety," according to the defense filing. The defense filing, signed by defense lawyers Karen Friedman Agnifilo, Marc Agnifilo, and Jacob Kaplan, asks New York Supreme Court Justice Gregory Carro to order prosecutors to turn over all of their communications with Aetna. It also asks the judge to hold "a full evidentiary hearing," with sworn testimony, to determine possible remedies, including the recusal of lead prosecutor Joel Seidemann, the suppression of evidence, and the dismissal of Mangione's indictment. The subpoena, issued directly to Aetna and signed by Seidemann, bypassed the judge and defense team and should never have requested even the limited, HIPAA-protected information of Mangione's account number and period of coverage, his lawyers argue. "If they're seeking information that is privileged, like medical records, the DA can't just subpoena that stuff directly," veteran homicide public defender Sam Roberts told Business Insider on Friday. Prosecutors must first file a motion or application to the judge and defense team, alerting them to the subpoena, and then wait for the judge to review the subpoenaed materials privately, said Roberts, a senior staff attorney on the homicide defense task force of the Legal Aid Society. "It sounds like they jumped the gun here," Roberts said. "They got this information without first giving notice to the defense, and they got the information directly from Aetna when they should have sent it to the court first without opening it." Mangione's lawyers allege in their filing that the May 14 subpoena initially commanded Aetna to send someone to appear in court on May 23 with "the account number and period of time during which the following individual received coverage: Luigi Mangione." The subpoena was not made public or viewed by BI. May 23 was "a completely made-up date," on which no court proceeding was scheduled, Mangione's lawyers wrote. Along with the subpoena, Seidemann sent a cover letter with his phone number and email, advising that "in lieu of appearing personally with the requested documents," Aetna could mail or deliver the records to the court, the lawyers wrote. Prosecutors "were plainly lying to get the materials as soon as possible," they wrote, in order to bring their case to trial first, before he could be tried by federal prosecutors. In addition to the state-level case, which alleges murder as an act of terrorism, Mangione is facing related, death-penalty-eligible murder charges in federal court. Prosecutors in central Pennsylvania say they, too, will try him for forgery and firearm charges related to his arrest there on December 9, after a five-day national manhunt. Mangione's lawyers previously complained that in April, Manhattan prosecutors improperly listened to an 11-minute attorney-client phone call, something the DA's office has denied. Both state and federal jurisdictions are vying to be first to put Mangione on trial. Had Mangione's lawyers not been bypassed, they would have objected to the Aetna subpoena, including on the grounds that "the information sought is not relevant," they wrote. A spokesperson for the DA's office told BI on Friday that they will respond to the defense allegations in court papers. "Aetna received a subpoena for certain medical records, and we provided them appropriately," said Phil Blando, executive director for communications for Aetna's parent company, CVS Health. Asked if the district attorney subpoena requested details beyond Mangione's account number and coverage period, Blando told BI in an email, "You have our statement." Mangione, a 27-year-old software developer, remains in a federal jail in Brooklyn in the December 4 murder of Thompson. The 50-year-old father of two from Minnesota was shot in the back at close range outside a Midtown hotel where he was about to address the UnitedHealthcare shareholders meeting. Mangione is linked to the killing by his so-called "manifesto" and by DNA, ballistics, video, and fingerprint evidence, according to state and federal prosecutors. He is next due in state court on September 16, and in federal court on December 5; both courts are in Manhattan.

China Vows ‘Zero Tolerance' for Smuggling of Critical Minerals
China Vows ‘Zero Tolerance' for Smuggling of Critical Minerals

Bloomberg

time14 hours ago

  • Bloomberg

China Vows ‘Zero Tolerance' for Smuggling of Critical Minerals

Chinese authorities vowed 'zero tolerance' for the smuggling of strategic minerals and saidd it would strengthen law-enforcement to crack down on illegal shipments and the unauthorized transfer of related technology. At a meeting on Saturday, China's coordination office on export control highlighted recent cases of critical-mineral smuggling involving false declarations and transshipments through third countries, according to the state broadcaster CCTV.

DOWNLOAD THE APP

Get Started Now: Download the App

Ready to dive into a world of global content with local flavor? Download Daily8 app today from your preferred app store and start exploring.
app-storeplay-store