Trigger Warning: This article contains references to alleged sexual assault involving a minor that some readers may find distressing.
Seven years ago, a Texas man had no idea that his invitation to his sister and her son to move in with him and his family would end tragically.
Mercia Sneed, then 42, and her then-13-year-old son, Simieon Smith, had been living in a motel before her brother Michael bought a new home on Eagle Drive in Mansfield, Texas. Michael Sneed’s new home was big enough to welcome his sister and her son. He had funded the property through a car-wreck civil settlement.
The family gathered on July 27, 2019, to unpack and celebrate the move. After everyone went to sleep that night, Sneed, her son, and Michael’s daughter, nine-year-old Melodi, were sitting in the game room when Sneed asked her son to leave.
Sneed allegedly took a blue-and-white pillow, pressed it over Melodi’s face, and used her body weight to muffle her niece’s screams. Smith reportedly witnessed his mother suffocating Melodi, although he admitted, “I couldn’t see everything fully.”
Hours later, Melodi was found unresponsive, and police were called. She was rushed to Mansfield Methodist Hospital, where she was pronounced dead. The Tarrant County Medical Examiner later ruled her death a homicide.
Sneed confessed to detectives that she held the pillow over Melodi’s face for two to three minutes and then wiped foam from the girl’s mouth. She added that she discarded the pillow and a bottle of peroxide before other family members found Melodi dead.
Sneed allegedly falsely told investigators that Melodi had pricked her and her children with needles at a church and that her children had been s*xually assaulted.
Smith later testified in court that he saw his mother on top of Melodi and heard muffled screams.
“She fought. She screamed. She tried to stay alive,” prosecutor Victoria Lydahl told jurors during closing arguments. “But she was only nine.”
In defense, attorneys Bob Gill and Miles Brissette have argued Sneed was legally insane, citing a state psychologist’s diagnosis of schizoaffective disorder with persecutory delusions.
Sneed was initially charged with injury to a child, then upgraded to capital murder after the county’s medical examiner ruled Melodi’s death a homicide.
The case was dragged on for so long because psychologists repeatedly found Sneed incompetent to stand trial, and she spent much of that time in a state hospital.
“Melodi’s family has waited seven years, seven long years,” assistant district attorney Charlie Boulware told jurors. “It’s extremely cruel and criminal, and there’s only one person to blame.”
A Tarrant County jury rejected the insanity defense and convicted Sneed of capital murder and injury to a child causing serious bodily injury. On August 13, she was sentenced to two life terms, including life without parole, for capital murder.
Disclaimer: The Inquisitr could not independently confirm the facts of this incident and is reporting based on the information available within the public record.
