FULL TEXT – Norfolk, Virginia – A woman convicted of voluntary manslaughter in the beating death of her stepdaughter will wait in jail until she is sentenced next month.
Circuit Judge Morris B. Gutterman ordered Catherine L.
Sherriod of Norfolk jailed without bond until sentencing Jan. 16.
The statement of a 13-year-old girl who said her stepmother
often savagely beat 10-year-old Gail Sherriod led to the conviction earlier
this week.
“Everytime me and Gail be cleaning up the house and Cathy
say this ain’t right or this ain’t done right, she jump up and hits us with the
same stick,” Doris Sherriod’s statement said.
Gail Sherriod dies Aug. 12 of shock and circulatory collapse
brought about by the beatings, an autopsy showed.
Mrs. Sherriod faces a possible 10-year prison term for the
crime.
In a 10-minute court hearing Monday, Deputy Commonwealth’s
Attorney Tommy Miller read Doris’s statement detailing the brutal beatings Aug.
11 and 12 that led to the death of her sister.
While Doris babysat for her infant stepsister, Mrs. Sherriod
repeatedly beat Gail for eating cookies and not cleaning up her room, the
statement said.
Doris Sherriod said she heard her sister’s screams and saw
the wooden stick with which her stepmother beat Gail.
At a preliminary hearing, Mrs. Sherriod testified that the
girl had slipped in the bathtub and was listless for hours, refusing to eat or
move until she died.
The autoplay refuted her statement.
Charges against the girl’s father, James Sherriod, a bowling
alley maintenance man, were dropped because he was not at home at the time of
the beatings.
[“Woman jailed for girl’s beating death,” syndicated (AP),
The Free-Lance Star (Fredericksburg, Va.), Dec. 20, 1978, p. p. 3]
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