ORANGE CITY (AP) — Prosecutors on Monday temporarily kept secret the details of a plea agreement reached with an Iowa daycare provider charged with killing a three-year-old girl in her care.
The Iowa Attorney General’s Office and Sioux County Attorney Thomas Kunstle declined to release the agreement reached last week with 34-year-old Rochelle Sapp of Orange City.
Judge Edward Jacobson had signed an order Friday requiring the agreement to be filed and made public Monday. But the attorney general’s office contacted him Monday morning to object, saying both sides agreed the deal wouldn’t be released until “at or before” Thursday’s plea and sentencing hearing for Sapp. Jacobson issued an amended order Monday afternoon agreeing the deal could be filed Thursday.
Sapp is charged with first-degree murder and child endangerment causing death in the October 2013 death of Autumn Elgersma. Investigators say she slammed the toddler to the floor at her in-home daycare, causing severe head injuries that killed the girl two days later.
It is unclear which charges prosecutors might drop under the deal, and what potential sentence Sapp faces.
Attorney General’s Office spokesman Geoff Greenwood said plea agreements aren’t final until they’re accepted by judges.
They are often made public days before plea hearings.
The girl’s death has generated enormous interest in Orange City, a highly religious and conservative town of 6,200 in northwestern Iowa.
Investigators say Sapp became angry when the toddler was having problems taking her coat off Oct. 29, 2013, picked her up and slammed her to the ground. They say she then called Autumn’s mother telling her the girl was hurt after falling down the stairs when she went to play in the basement.
The mother took her daughter to a nearby hospital, where doctors diagnosed her with head injuries and had her airlifted to a Sioux Falls, South Dakota hospital. Doctors there discovered that she had a fractured skull and serious brain trauma. She died two days later. A medical examiner ruled it a homicide caused by blunt force head injuries.
Sapp made statements confessing to causing the girl’s injuries during questioning with detectives, to friends and in text messages, prosecutors say. Her defense lawyer had argued some of those statements should be suppressed because she had not been read her Miranda rights and had barely slept or eaten for two days. But prosecutors objected, saying they were made voluntarily. Jacobson hasn’t ruled on the dispute.