CLEARWATER, Fla. (AP) - A Tampa Bay area woman faces a mandatory life sentence in a 4-year-old girl's fatal beating.
The Tampa Tribune reports that Pinellas County prosecutors agreed to take the death penalty off the table in exchange for 45-year-old Nikki Tyler Gardner-Bradley pleading guilty Monday to first-degree murder.
Authorities Gardner-Bradley and her boyfriend, 61-year-old Sylvester Carew, brought Zineah Taylor Johnson's lifeless body into a St. Petersburg hospital in August 2008. An autopsy revealed signs of abuse and malnourishment.
Carew, the child's grandfather, pleaded guilty to first-degree murder in February 2013, also to avoid a possible death sentence.
