A mother of three has been sentenced to 30 to 38 years in prison after she pleaded guilty to second-degree murder. Brandi Sturdivant, 32, abandoned her children in a burning house she set alight in Greensboro, North Carolina. The home caught fire at approximately 8am in December 2022. Her 1-year-old twins and 4-year-old child were found by first responders huddled together and burned.
An autopsy revealed that the cause of death for the three children was smoke inhalation and carbon monoxide poisoning. It also revealed that cocaine was present in one child’s system. FOX8 reports that Sturdivant allegedly confirmed to investigators that she stored cocaine in the residence. Authorities revealed that the fire was centred around the door frame of the bedroom occupied by the three children, leaving them with no route to escape. Their mother was found at the end of the street behind a police barricade, stumbling out of a vehicle and crying.
She told police that she had left the living room stove running at 500 degrees to heat the residence before she departed. However, investigators found that the stove was not the cause of the blaze.
Meanwhile, a gasoline can was found on the front doorstep of the home. Sturdivant can be seen in Ring Camera footage leaving the residence on the morning of the blaze to take two of her older children to school, with smoke seen shortly after.
Neighbours revealed that she regularly left her children unsupervised at home, sometimes at night, and that some of them called her “the crazy lady next door”.
Calls to Child Protective Services and law enforcement regarding Strudivant date back to 2016. One was placed by Strudivant’s own mother
The North Carolina Department of Adult Corrections will determine the exact amount of time she will spend in prison. Her relatives arrived at the scene of the incident and told authorities that Strudivant had six children, but the oldest did not live with her at the home on Grimsley Street.
Meanwhile, the Guilford County Department of Social Services had an open assessment on Sturdivant at the time of the fire, which prompted the state to investigate the local agency.
It found that the local agency violated multiple policies.
The defence for Strudivant said that she suffers from bipolar disorder, and that she “had no idea that she was putting her children in such a terrible high-risk situation”.
Judge David Hall said the incident should never have happened, especially given the conditions the children were living in before the fire.
He said: “Maybe it bears reminding and repeating that the name and the mission of the agency is the Child Protective Services. That appears to be lost on those involved … and those who are supposed to recognise and intervene, and clearly that did not happen.”
