The former Mobile day care van driver who pleaded guilty late last year to manslaughter in the hot vehicle death of a 5-year-old boy was sentenced to 20 years in state prison Thursday.
Valarie Patterson, the former van driver at Community Nursery & Preschool Academy on Hillcrest Road in west Mobile, was accused of leaving 5-year-old Kamden Johnson in the vehicle in August 2017-– on a day where temperatures reached 92 degrees.
Kamden’s body was found Aug. 21, 2017 on the side Demetropolis Road — a few miles from the day care.
Patterson, who pleaded guilty to manslaughter in November, was sentenced Thursday to 20 years in state prison — the maximum for manslaughter — during an appearance in Mobile County Circuit Court, according to WKRG.
“It’s been quite a few years and coming, but Ms. Patterson was finally held responsible for leaving Kamden in that daycare van where he died from heat exposure,” Keith Blackwood, an assistant district attorney in the Mobile County DA’s office, told WKRG.
Blackwood said Kamden would still be alive if Patterson checked her van before leaving work.
“It didn’t have to happen this way. If she had taken the van back to the church like she was supposed to, and checked it this wouldn’t have happened,” he said. “But instead she made the choice to do something else. To go to a hotel for that entire afternoon, where she sat in the air conditioning and left Kamden asleep in that van where he died.”