No murder is worse than the murder of a child, said Assistant Commonwealth's Attorney Kathryn S. Swart.
Myles Simon was 21 months old, weighed 26.5 pounds and was 33 inches tall when his baby-sitter’s husband, Mohammad Aukif Ahmad, murdered him, on Sept. 12, 2006.
Judge Leslie M. Alden formally sentenced Ahmad, 26 of Springfield, to 40 years in prison for second-degree murder during a three-hour hearing in Fairfax County Circuit Court last Friday, Aug. 17.
"We miss our son, we want our son to be here today, and we hate that our son died a horrible death that no human deserves," Myles' mother, Michelle Leete, told Judge Alden Friday.
"Myles was loved, is loved, by his family, by myself, his Dad and his sister. Everyday is a struggle for us," she said. "Life without him is unbearable at times."
Some of Myles' family members wore T-shirts with a photo of Myles smiling. "Gone too soon, but not forgotten," the T-shirts read.
"He was full of life, he had the most infectious giggle. When you heard it, you couldn't help but giggling yourself," his mother testified during Ahmad's trial in May.
AHMAD'S WIFE, Jillian Ahmad, operated an unlicensed day-care center out of their townhouse on the 6400 block of Silver Ridge Circle in Kingstowne.
The morning of Sept. 12, 2006, Jillian Ahmad left at 9 a.m. for Wal-Mart to buy milk, juice and snacks, leaving four children under 4 years old in the care of her husband.
But Jillian Ahmad first visited a friend before going to Wal-Mart, a friend her husband didn't allow her to call on the phone, she testified during the May trial. Her husband — controlling according to multiple witnesses — called her on her cell phone almost 20 times while she was at the friend's house.
In one of the calls, Mohammad Ahmad told his wife that Myles was getting tired and sleepy and he was going to put him down to sleep.
During another call he made to Jillian as she was returning home, he yelled, "Hurry up and get the hell home," Jillian Ahmad testified at trial.
When she returned, Myles' eyes were rolled back and his lips were blue, she testified. "I started screaming, 'What happened, what happened?' He said, "I don't know, he just passed out.'"
She told her husband to call 911.
"He said, 'No, just fix it," according to her testimony.
When fire and rescue personnel arrived minutes later, Myles couldn't be saved.
Mohammad Ahmad was arrested three days later at the Westway Motor Inn, two miles from LaGuardia International Airport, in New York on Sept. 15, 2006.
"I grieve and mourn Miles’ death every single day," Mohammad Ahmad said at Friday’s sentencing. His defense attorneys plan to appeal his conviction, arguing that it was improper for his wife to testify against him.
MYLES SUFFERED one blow to the abdomen — possibly from being punched or kicked — that resulted in the laceration of his liver and bruising of his kidneys, colon, bladder and diaphragm. The blow he suffered to his head — possibly from being stomped or slammed against a hard object — resulted in complex fractures of his skull and instantaneous death, according to Todd Luckasevic, the medical examiner who testified during the May trial.
"We still search for why this happened, but we sure know how," Swart, the prosecutor, said at the trial. "Whatever [the defendant] got enraged over, he took it out on Myles."
A Fairfax jury convicted Ahmad of second-degree murder after a three-day trial in May. The same jury took less than 15 minutes to recommend that Ahmad serve the maximum sentence for second-degree murder.
"You don't look at those pictures without giving 40 years, that's the kind of murder this was," Swart told Judge Alden last Friday.
"I suspect if [members of the jury] could haven given him life, they would have. He deserves every second."