Baltimore parents who starved their daughter to death sentenced to 60 years

The parents of a severely emaciated 5-year-old Baltimore girl who weighed no more than an infant when she died in 2024 were sentenced Thursday to 60 years in prison after they pleaded guilty to charges of child abuse resulting in death.

Assistant State’s Attorney Robert Render asked Maryland Circuit Court Judge Dana Middleton to sentence the parents to 70 years, the harshest sanction available. He said Bernice Byrd, 34, and Gerald Byrd, 36, lacked remorse for what he called heinous conduct. Defense attorneys for the Byrds argued the Baltimore City Department of Social Services is partly to blame for Zona Byrd’s death and urged leniency for her parents.

Before imposing her sentence, Middleton called the case one of the most disturbing she had ever seen.

“I don’t know if there is any amount of time that will ever be enough,” she said. “It’s not just about time. One child doesn’t have any more time left. That time is gone.”

The judge condemned the parents for their cruelty and the Department of Social Services for failing to protect Zona and her siblings, who she said were vulnerable, distressed and in need. She said the children’s aunt was accused of harassment for calling the state’s child abuse hotline and attempting to report suspected neglect too many times.

“That is a systemic failure that contributed to the death of a child,” Middleton said.

Ben Shnider, a spokesperson for the Maryland Department of Human Services, which oversees the city department of social services, declined to respond to the judge’s allegations, citing state law requiring the details of child welfare investigations be kept confidential.

When authorities discovered Zona unresponsive in her bed in October 2024, her ribs were visible and a detective who touched her body could not discern any muscle, according to a police report. She should have been in kindergarten, yet she was wearing toddler-size clothing that hung off her. She weighed 17 1/2 pounds.

Her older brother was also malnourished and could hardly stand or walk, police wrote at the time.

The Byrds in February pleaded guilty to one count of abuse resulting in the death of a child under the age of 13 and one count of child abuse in the first degree. The first count was for Zona, and the second was for harm to their son.

During Thursday’s hearing, Render said the starvation and neglect Zona and her brother suffered were avoidable. He said Gerald Byrd made sure to feed his dog but not his children. The Byrds also fed themselves from a stash of nonperishable food they kept locked away in their bedroom, he added.

When Zona died, Render said, she had a minuscule amount of liquid in her stomach — equivalent to one teaspoon.

Assistant State’s Attorney Stephanie Steinberg said that no special training is needed for parents to know their children need nourishment. And not only did the Byrds withhold food from Zona and her brother, but the couple also locked the children in a bedroom, with no access to a bathroom. She compared the children’s living conditions to torture.

“It beggars the imagination to contemplate the suffering the children endured and the distress that they endured while being callously ignored by the people they trusted to protect them and provide for them,” prosecutors wrote in a sentencing memorandum filed with the court last week.

In a statement, State’s Attorney Ivan Bates thanked police for their diligence on the case and prosecutors “for finding a resolution that both delivers justice and spares this family from the trauma of a trial.”

“No punishment will be as severe for these defendants as living with the knowledge that they murdered their innocent child,” Bates wrote. “As a father, the facts of this case are nauseating, and my heart continues to ache for Zona, who is gone from us far too soon.”

Defense attorneys representing the Byrds asked Middleton to consider the parents’ rough childhoods, their mental health disorders and social workers’ failure to protect the Byrd children in the months preceding Zona’s death.

Zoé Fiske, a psychologist who evaluated Gerald Byrd, testified that he was neglected as a child and endured extensive physical and sexual abuse while growing up in Baltimore’s foster care system.

Phillip Corey Levin, Bernice Byrd’s attorney, said she was born to parents who were addicted to drugs and alcohol and who abandoned her.

“How does a mother fail her child this badly? I can say Ms. Byrd never had a parent fail her. She never had a parent,” Levin said.

He read a statement from her: “I am so sorry. I was really a bad mom. I have to live with her death for the rest of my life.”

Levin said he “couldn’t be happier” that the judge showed leniency by imposing a sentence 10 years below the maximum.

Attorney Deborah Katz Levi, who represents Gerald Byrd, said he had no concept of healthy, proper parenting.

“There are no excuses,” Levi said. “There’s context.”

At the February hearing where the Byrds pleaded guilty, Levi read from an April 2024 letter detailing how the social services agency handled a tip that the children were being starved, which came nine months before Zona died.

The caller alleged that the children were being kept in a locked bedroom and that they smelled of urine, Levi said. The caller reported Zona was “skin and bones” and sent the agency pictures showing the girl’s emaciated state, according to the letter Levi read.

Middleton said social workers either did not see the Byrd children as they documented in reports or didn’t care about them. Or they lied, she added.

“The Department of Social Services should be deterred by what happened to these children,” she said.

Middleton also ordered the Byrds to have no contact with their other children, who traveled to the courthouse Thursday but did not participate in the hearing. As the judge read the sentence, the Byrds did not react. They showed no emotion as sheriff’s deputies led them away.