Toddler’s Murderer Gets 25 Years to Life
A Santa Ana man convicted this year of brutally murdering a toddler in his care was sentenced Friday to 25 years to life in prison.
Trent Fouts, 35, an admitted heroin addict, had testified during the trial that the child’s death was accidental, a result of his neglect during a drug-induced haze. But prosecutors accused Fouts of molesting 20-month-old Joshua Troy Massengill and beating him repeatedly before leaving him propped against a convalescent hospital wall Jan. 10, 1997.
Fouts fled but was arrested in New Mexico after his pictures appeared on the television show “Unsolved Mysteries.” He and the boy’s mother, Jenise Massengill, were roommates, and Massengill had left the boy in Fouts’ care while she went out that night.
The jury did not find true a special circumstance of molestation that would have made Fouts eligible for the death penalty.
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