Abby Connolly
In Texas, the very first Hispanic woman has been sentenced to death in the state. With an execution date set in just one week, citizens across the country are begging for her to be released.
Melissa Lucio, a 53-year-old mother of 14, was arrested on February 18, 2007, the day after her two-year-old daughter Mariah had tragically died.
That day, Lucio and her family were moving into a new home when the toddler fell down a flight of stairs. After the fall, she appeared to not have sustained any serious injuries. Yet tragically, two days later, she did not wake up from her nap. Melissa immediately called for help, but Mariah was unable to be resuscitated at the hospital.
That same night, Melissa was called in for questioning.
“In truth, Ms. Lucio’s fate began to take shape the moment emergency responders arrived at her home and made the first of a series of assumptions and misjudgments that turned the loss of her child into an even greater nightmare than anyone could have imagined,” explained the Innocence Project, an organization that works to free those wrongfully accused of crimes.
The first responders made assumptions about the manner of Mariah’s death that Melissa and many of her supporters believe are entirely untrue.
One was that when the first responders arrived, they were in the new apartment the family had just moved into and assumed Mariah had fallen there. This would be strange, considering the new apartment only had a handful of stairs.
Where Mariah had actually fallen was at their old apartment; a unit only accessible by a 14-step staircase.
Family photo; pictured above is Melissa
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