The mother of a 7-year-old boy who died in 2022 will spend the rest of her life behind bars after a Denton County jury found her guilty of capital murder this week.
Sabrina Ho was convicted on several charges related to her son’s death on April 1, 2022, including capital murder, injury to a child causing bodily injury, and injury to a child by omission. Nearly a year ago, the 46-year-old’s boyfriend, Todd Lofton Shaw, pleaded guilty to killing Phoenix Ho and was sentenced to life in prison.
As previously covered by The Dallas Express, Ho claimed to have called 911 after seeing Phoenix struggling to breathe and his eyes rolling back into his head. However, when the paramedics arrived at the home, they found that the unresponsive child bore the marks of significant physical abuse.
“The paramedics discovered that the victim had extensive injuries all over the body. They transported him to a local hospital, and he was pronounced deceased at the hospital,” Denton Police Deputy Chief Frank Padgett said at the time, according to Fox 4 KDFW.
As investigators dug into the suspicious circumstances surrounding Phoenix’s death, Ho testified to having been aware of Shaw harming her son for weeks but did nothing about it. She kept him out of school and refrained from going to the doctor in order to hide his injuries, which some witnesses referred to as some of the worst they had ever seen in their careers, as the Denton County Criminal District Attorney’s Office reported in a social media post.
A total of 182 children died as a result of abuse and neglect in Texas in 2022, with 80% being under the age of 3, according to data from the Department of Family and Protective Services (DFPS). In over half of these cases, Child Protective Services (CPS) had purportedly received no reports of abuse in the family or had not launched an investigation beforehand.
As recently reported by The Dallas Express, many child advocates have tried to bring attention to what they consider to be the harmful effects of a 2021 state law barring DFPS from removing children from the care of their parents or guardians unless they could be proven to be in “immediate danger.” This heightened requirement translates into the authorities needing to provide substantial proof of abuse or neglect before children can be removed from their parents or guardians.
CPS has removed considerably fewer children from unsafe environments since the law was passed, dropping from 16,522 in 2020 to 9,623 in 2022, according to data.
The Dallas Police Department investigates child abuse and other crimes against children, yet its impact on curbing crime overall has been dampened by a longstanding staffing shortage. DPD fields approximately 3,000 officers when a city of Dallas’ size should have closer to 4,000 on staff, according to a City report.
Moreover, City officials budgeted only $654 million for the department this fiscal year, far fewer tax dollars than those allocated in other high-crime jurisdictions, such as New York City, Los Angeles, and Chicago.