Veronica Youngblood, a 38-year-old Virginia mother, was sentenced to 78 years in prison on Friday for the murder of her teenage daughter and five-year-old daughter. Youngblood had fed them sleeping pills before shooting them in their beds to punish her ex-husband.
Mom who killed daughters to spite ex-husband declares she was 'good' parent https://t.co/ZM3YAkZq9A
— Fox News (@FoxNews) September 26, 2023
Youngblood said she had been a good mother but something snapped inside her mind. Her 15-year-old daughter Sharon Castro managed to call 911 and tell the dispatcher that she had been shot by her mother. The recording of this call traumatized jurors who asked if they could receive therapy afterwards.
Ron Youngblood, Veronica’s ex-husband, said that his ex-wife had used their daughters as ‘leverage’ to get what she wanted from him. He claimed Veronica bought a gun one week before the murders because he fought to take Brooklynn (his biological daughter) and Sharon (Veronica’s daughter from a prior relationship).Â
A mother has been sentenced to 78 years in prison in the 2018 fatal shootings of her two daughters in a Virginia apartment. Veronica Youngblood, who confessed to the crime hours after the killings, pleaded at the time not guilty by reason of insanity. https://t.co/nrHPHGrRHw
— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) September 24, 2023
“Those girls were leverage to her — leverage to get what she wanted from me,” Youngblood, a 52-year-old Navy veteran told The New York Post. “She obviously knew those girls were the most important things in my life.”
“She saw that she had no more tools to use against me, so she decided to get rid of them,” he continued.
The defense argued that Veronica was not guilty because of insanity due to physical and sexual abuse during childhood as well as working as a sex worker at an early age to support her eldest daughter who lived in poverty in Argentina. However, jurors rejected this argument leading Judge Randy Bellows to sentence her 78 years behind bars – two murder sentences consecutively rather than concurrently which would have reduced it down to 42 years.
Veronica Youngblood, 38, was given 78 years in prison for the fatal shootings which occurred five years ago.https://t.co/gPZoktlMNu
— The Daily Beast (@thedailybeast) September 23, 2023
Ron Youngblood expressed shock at his ex-wife’s actions saying he never imagined she would do anything like this to their daughters knowing how angry she felt towards him. Veronica’s plan was born out of anger towards her husband however no amount of punishment can ever bring back these innocent children or erase the trauma inflicted on those involved with such tragedy.