Tabitha Frank, a Hartford mother whose toddler fell out of a window and died in 2023, pleaded guilty to manslaughter earlier this week and was sentenced to five years of probation.
Frank was working part time as an Uber driver and left 2-year-old Corneliuz Shand Williams with his four older sisters — the oldest of whom was 12 — on July 22, 2023. Frank said she thought the child’s father was going to arrive momentarily. But the father didn’t arrive until it was too late. Corneliuz fell from a third-floor window and died in the hospital two days later.
On Tuesday, Frank pleaded guilty to a felony manslaughter charge and risk of injury to a child in her son’s death.
“I’m not a monster. I’m a mother who made a mistake, doing the best that she could,” Frank said in an interview. “My kids know they are loved, despite what anybody else thinks. My kids know. My son knows.”
State’s attorney Sharmese Walcott said in a statement that it was “an extremely difficult and tragic case.”
“A two-year-old child died a horrendous and preventable death and should never have been placed in the situation that led to this outcome,” Walcott said in her statement. “Social services had been involved with this family off and on, yet this tragedy still occurred.”
Child welfare workers with the state Department of Children and Families investigated the family 18 times before Corneliuz died and had most recently determined the children were safe in their home about a month before the accident, which Frank said was proof she was a fit mother who just needed some extra help.
Many of the family’s problems stemmed from poverty. Research has shown high levels of correlation between poverty and neglect accusations. Families with low incomes and families of color are more likely than wealthier, white peers to face child neglect allegations.
Frank said earlier this week that she wished things had been different, that had she known what would happen she could have paid for a babysitter or waited for her son’s father to arrive.
“Every day I wake up wishing I could take it back,” she said.
Frank was represented during the bulk of the case by public defender Dana Sanetti.
“This was a tragic situation and a difficult case,” Sanetti said in a written statement. “We commend the court for its steadfast commitment to justice.”
Frank still grieves her son, a little boy who loved Mickey Mouse and went by the nickname Papa.
“I love my kids. I love all five of them,” Frank said. “I’m just sorry things happened the way they happened. If I could go back, I would have done things way different. But that’s not my reality. This is my reality.”