A Texas judge told a convicted child killer that ‘he should die in a locked closet’ for savagely beating his girlfriend’s four-year-old daughter to death.
Leiliana Wright was severely beaten and ‘strung up’ by an array of belts in a closet in her Grand Prairie home as punishment when she died in March 2016.
She died suffering blunt force injuries to her head and stomach.
The mother of 4-year-old Leiliana Wright’s mother Jeri Quezada, pled guilty in July 2017 for the role she played in her daughter’s death.
Grand Prairie Police said Jeri Quezada and her ex-boyfriend, Charles Phifer, beat the four-year-old with a belt and a bamboo stick, then tied her up and threw her against a wall March 12, 2016, because she reportedly drank her brother’s juice. Leiliana Wright later died at the hospital.
Police said Quezada and Phifer were high on heroin that day. Both were arrested and charged in connection to Leiliana’s death.
On Wednesday, Charles Wayne Phifer, 36, received an automatic life sentence without the possibility of parole for the murder.
‘Hanging a little girl in a locked closet was savage. You should die in a locked closet,’ State District Judge Robert Burns told Phifer.
‘I think this is the worst case I’ve ever seen,’ Burns told Phifer.

Charles Wayne Phifer, 36, received an automatic life sentence without the possibility of parole for the murder

An investigator who snapped photos of Leiliana’s body said nurses and officers were crying outside of the child’s hospital room ‘because she was severely beaten’.
In his testimony, Sergeant Makovy recalled how he interviewed the child’s mother Jeri Quezada, 33, who was hesitant to talk and faces 50 years in jail for her part in young Leiliana’s death.
Quezada will be formally sentenced by the judge Wednesday. Quezada testified against her former boyfriend last week.
She told the court that Phifer tied Leiliana up in the closet in a way so that she couldn’t sit down.
He then lifted her by the throat and threw her into the closet so forcefully it left an indentation. She said he did this because she refused to eat, according to NBCDFW.
Leiliana was reportedly sick and vomiting days prior to her death.

Pictures of the crime scene shown to the jury displayed a bamboo switch that Phifer beat Leiliana to death with.
Her jeans were also displayed to the jury tangled up in three belts.
Quezada told police she left the child in her boyfriend’s care because she was frustrated and needed ‘a break’. She was out at dinner with her mother while Phifer was home with Leiliana.
She came home, she used heroin with Phifer, then asked about the child. Phifer responded saying the child was hung in the closet.
He put her there after he claimed she fell in the shower.
Quezada – who has a history of child abuse – allegedly previously told police that she kicked and slapped her daughter as discipline.
When questioned about it in court last week she said she couldn’t remember telling police such details.

Jeri Quezada allegedly told police she would slap and kick Leiliana as discipline. When asked about that last week, she said she couldn’t remember telling police those details
Leiliana’s grandmother raised alarm about the child abuse to Child Protective Services sending in a photo of Leiliana with a black eye.
In February 2016 a caseworker went to the home and found Leiliana and her younger brother with Quezada and let her remain with the children.
The caseworker neglected to do a background check which would have shown that Quezada is a convicted felon with a history of child abuse that saw her lose custody of her three older children.
Quezada’s mother Adeline Carr also testified in court last week that she lived with her for a couple months before Leiliana’s death and described how skittish the child was.
‘At first, she was very frightened of every strange noise or loud noise,’ Carr said in court.
She described Leiliana as quiet and shy, who stared at things rather than speaking up and asking for them.
Carr said Quezada would tell Leiliana it was okay to come out of her bedroom after waking each morning, but the child would stay in her room unless instructed she could leave.
Quezada is awaiting sentencing after plead guilty to felony injury to a child in July 2017 and is testifying against Phifer last week as a part of a plea deal.