A Wichita Falls man jailed following the death of his 2-year-old daughter reached a plea deal with the Wichita County District Attorney’s Office.
On July 19, Garrett Lloyd Wayne Jose Gestes, 31, pleaded guilty to two counts of injury to a child and was sentenced to 18 months in a state jail.
As part of the deal, two charges of abandoning a child were dropped.
Because he had already spent 603 days in the Wichita County Jail, Gestes' sentence was set at time served. A state jail felony is punishable by 180 days to two years in a state jail facility.
An affidavit filed in the case revealed police were called to a home on Longview Street on Dec. 20, 2020. There they found the child dead on the kitchen floor.
Video footage and witness interviews indicated Gestes left with two children to work for Door Dash but left the 2-year-old girl and a 3-year-old sibling home alone for three hours.
An autopsy revealed the girl had suffered from COVID-19 but could not determine a cause of death.
Police reported the house was covered with rotten food, dirty clothes, dirty dishes and empty soda cans.
The girl’s 29-year-old mother, Autumn Nicole Gestes, was charged with tampering with evidence after investigators claimed she had deleted thousands of text messages on her phone pertaining to incidents in the home.
She was free Tuesday on a $25,000 bail awaiting the disposition of the charge, according to online jail records.
This article originally appeared on Wichita Falls Times Record News: Father takes a plea in death of toddler
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