Day-care operator to be sentenced Thursday in drowning
Thursday's scheduled sentencing of Tianna Edwards, the North Philadelphia woman who pleaded guilty in December to involuntary manslaughter in connection with the drowning of a boy who attended her improperly licensed day-care center, was rescheduled to next Thursday.
Thursday's scheduled sentencing of Tianna Edwards, the North Philadelphia woman who pleaded guilty in December to involuntary manslaughter in connection with the drowning of a boy who attended her improperly licensed day-care center, was rescheduled to next Thursday.
Edwards, 32, pleaded guilty in Philadelphia Common Pleas Court to involuntary manslaughter, welfare fraud, and endangering the welfare of a child.
When 7-year-old Isear Jeffcoat went missing in June 2012, it took nine hours for a police marine unit to discover his body under six feet of murky water at the bottom of a swimming pool at Edwards' mother's house, prosecutors said. Edwards operated Tianna's Terrific Daycare on Rising Sun Avenue, which Jeffcoat attended.
Edwards is already serving a sentence of five years and three months on federal charges of fraudulently obtaining a day-care license, using her sister-in-law's identity, and improperly receiving $1.4 million in state subsidies from 2008 to 2011. - Joseph A. Slobodzian