Woman imprisoned after her granddaughter 'slowly starved to death'

A woman has been sentenced to prison after her granddaughter died on the Red Lake Reservation.

Sharon Rosebear, 64, was sentenced to 15 months in prison in U.S. District Court this week. In April, she was found guilty of felony child neglect following a six-day trial.

Rosebear was one of the child’s caretakers in 2022. According to evidence presented at trial, the child died that year from the combined effects of starvation and infection.

While Rosebear did not have formal legal custody of the girl, she was still responsible for her care, according to Minnesota law.

Rosebear and the child’s other caretakers received nutritional and cash assistance. But Rosebear "intentionally deprived" the child of needs like food, according to evidence.

The child reportedly weighed what she had nearly three years earlier at the time of her death.

Medical testimony at trial also established that the type of infection the child had when she died could have entered her body through scratches in her scalp caused by unaddressed lice, of which Rosebear was aware.

“One of the most tragic things about [the child’s] death is that it was so easily preventable … day after day, week after week, month after month, Ms. Rosebear watched as [the child] slowly starved to death,” Chief Judge Patrick Schiltz commented at trial.

Rosebear’s codefendant, Julius Fineday, Sr., was sentenced to five years in prison earlier this year after pleading guilty to one count of felony child neglect causing the death of a child.