A man has pleaded guilty to the death of a 5-year-old girl living in their Kansas homeless camp

[December 14, 2024]  By JOHN HANNA and HEATHER HOLLINGSWORTH

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — A man who lived in a makeshift camp with a homeless 5-year-old Kansas girl and her father pleaded guilty Friday to first-degree murder and rape in connection with the child’s death.

Prosecutors said Mickel Cherry, 26, admitted under questioning to suffocating Zoey Felix in October 2023 with a pillow in a tent at the camp in Topeka when he was alone with the girl. Doctors who examined her at a hospital saw injuries consistent with a sexual assault, and DNA evidence pointed to Cherry, the prosecutor said.

Cherry’s plea in Shawnee County District Court in Topeka means he will not face the death penalty. He had been charged with capital murder and rape, but District Attorney Mike Kagay said there is evidence that Cherry has an intellectual disability, something that would bar his execution under state and federal court decisions.

In court, Cherry told District Judge Jessica Heinen: “I’m mentally slow. I have trouble learning.”

It wasn’t clear with a capital murder conviction how soon a sentence of lethal injection would have been carried out because Kansas hasn’t executed anyone since 1965.

With Cherry's guilty plea, state law requires Heinen to sentence Cherry to life in prison with no chance of parole for at least 25 years. However, the judge has the authority to make it 50 years in prison without parole, and Kagay is asking for that.

The sentencing will be June 2-4. Cherry’s attorney, Peter Conley, did not want the date to be sooner and sought up to three days for a hearing, telling Heinen that he and other defense attorneys need time to investigate Cherry’s interactions with the Texas foster care system as a minor.

Conley did not respond immediately Friday to an email seeking additional details about what defense attorneys are investigating.

Kagay said Cherry made conflicting false statements to authorities about another man committing the crimes before acknowledging that he'd raped and suffocated her. Kagay said Cherry was alone with the girl for almost five hours while her father was at his job at a gas station across the street from the makeshift camp.

In court Friday, Cherry looked down, his eyes closed, as he answered the last of Heinen's questions about his plea agreement with prosecutors. He wore a yellow jail jumpsuit and remained handcuffed during the hearing.

Aimee Slusser, a friend of Felix’s father, who described herself as a mentor to the girl, left the courtroom in tears when Kagay discussed medical evidence that the girl was raped. She said afterward that whatever sentence Cherry faced, she didn’t feel justice would be done.

“A little girl’s life has been taken,” she told reporters. “Whatever he gets, it won’t bring her back”

The girl’s father was present for the entire 30-minute hearing but declined comment afterward.

A memorial along a sidewalk along a vacant, wooded lot honors 5-year-old murder victim Zoey Felix, Friday, Oct. 13, 2023, in Topeka, Kan. (AP Photo/John Hanna, File)

Felix’s death had child welfare advocates asking why the state didn’t remove the girl from a dangerous environment, and Slusser told reporters Friday that had the state done that, “Zoey would still be here.”

Kansas' child welfare department reported that it investigated the family five times in the last 13 months of Felix’s life but couldn’t confirm allegations of neglect or drug use by her mother, including after she was arrested for driving drunk with the girl in the car. The agency also said the family repeatedly declined help.

Court and police records show that Topeka police were called to the mother's home dozens of times. Neighbors said they saw the girl wandering the street outside dirty and hungry, and both parents alleged abuse. Felix’s mother was jailed at the end of 2022 over the drunken driving, which involved a crash with the girl in the front seat.

A neighbor said the mother threw Felix and her father out of the house two weeks before the girl died. They lived among the trees on a vacant lot about three-quarters of a mile to the south.

Cherry was involved with Felix's family before he was living with them in the makeshift homeless encampment. But authorities haven't said why he was involved with Felix's family, when he'd met the girl and her parents and how much contact he'd had with them. One police record listed him as living at the mother's home just weeks before Felix's death.

Police records show that before Cherry came to Topeka, he'd been living in Amarillo, Texas, 400 miles (605 kilometers) southwest of Topeka, at least as of October 2021. Documents show that his life in Texas was marked by periods of homelessness.

In court Friday, Heinen asked Cherry about whether he had any mental health issues, and he told her that he is taking medication for anxiety, depression and ADHD, or Attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder.

In May 2018, Cherry, then 20, was in Nacogdoches, Texas, about 500 miles (805 kilometers) southeast of Amarillo. A police report said Cherry walked into the police department’s headquarters and reported being homeless, on daily medication for “mental problems” and that he had “voices going off in his head.” The report did not say what happened afterward.

By August 2019, Cherry was back in Amarillo, municipal court records show. He was jailed briefly there that year for mistreating an animal and again in June 2021 for trespassing.

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Hollingsworth reported from Mission, Kansas.

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