A North Texas mom who pleaded guilty to poisoning her child with Benadryl in 2022 to fake a seizure disorder was sentenced Friday to 60 years in prison.
Jesika Lynn Jones, 32, of Krum, learned her sentence Friday morning at a hearing in the 485th Tarrant County District Court. She was sentenced to 60 years in prison on a charge of injury to a child causing serious bodily injury and to 24 months in a state jail for each of the three counts of abandoning or endangering a child, which will be served concurrently.
Her sentence comes after she was arrested twice this year for allegedly violating the conditions of her bond, which prohibited her from coming into contact with children under the age of 17.
Jones requested to be placed on probation when she pleaded guilty on Jan. 10, according to court documents.
“I think this is a person that definitely has a serious mental illness and needs to be treated. I don’t believe she’s a person that needs to be locked up in a penitentiary,” said defense attorney Keith McKay at the sentencing hearing.
A man who lived with Jones reported concerns of possible Munchausen syndrome by proxy — a condition in which a caretaker fakes symptoms in someone else — to Child Protective Services, according to an arrest warrant affidavit.
Prosecutors asked the judge to give her a sentence of no less than four years in prison.
A charge of injury to a child causing serious bodily harm is punishable by up to 99 years or life in prison, according to state law.
Judge Steven Jumes, of the 485th District Court, said he was not confident it would be appropriate to grant Jones probation because he believes she developed a “knack for finding situations where (she) can have access to children.”
Since July 2022, she was prohibited from having contact with a child and also lost custody of her children. The sentencing hearing was rescheduled twice, with the first hearing originally set for March 28, 2024.
Jones was first arrested in 2022, when she took her then 4-year-old daughter to Cook Children’s Hospital in Fort Worth and said she had been having seizures, according to a Tarrant County Sheriff’s Office arrest warrant.
The investigation discovered Jones took her daughter to the restroom several times at the hospital and doctors believed that is when she was giving the child doses of Benadryl.
The 4-year-old displayed body tremors, dilated pupils and an elevated heart rate, and could not stand on her own. Those symptoms were indicative of Benadryl poisoning, according to doctors’ statements in the warrant.
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Jones admitted to giving her daughter more Benadryl than she should, she said in an interview with Tarrant County Sheriff’s Office Detective Michael Weber. She lied several times about her children being diagnosed with epilepsy or seizure disorders, according to Weber.
According to an arrest warrant issued in July on the bond violations, Jones was in romantic relationships with two men whose children she came into contact with from 2022 to 2024. Both of the men said they were unaware of her arrest and criminal history.
When the man she dated from 2022 to 2023 confronted her about the injury to a child charge, “she minimized the events” of her arrest, the warrant states.
There were occasions where she was alone with his sons, according to the warrant.
She tried to medicate the son of the man she dated in 2022 to 2023 and the daughter of a man she was seeing in July 2024, the court documents state. She lied to both men, saying she was a nurse, according to the warrant.
One of Jones’ daughters testified at the hearing, saying her mother would give her medication for epilepsy and anxiety, making her feel tired, sick and lazy.
The child said she never wanted to see Jones again and did not feel safe around her.
“Your behavior is unacceptably disgusting and goes against the responsibilities of a parent. My children were subjected to malignant narcissism at the hand of you,” the father who has children with Jones said at the sentencing. “Their innocence was shattered by the very person who was supposed to protect and care for them.”
“I hope that you are held accountable ... for the heinous actions you inflicted upon my children,” the girls’ father said. “It is my wish that you face the full consequences of your cruelty, so that you may never have the opportunity to harm another innocent child.”
Weber said he hopes the Tarrant County Criminal District Attorney’s Office takes such cases more seriously.
“Jesika Jones simply bonded out on the misdemeanor charge and found another boyfriend with children she could medicate,” Weber said in a statement about the bond violations.
“This is a failure of the justice system in Tarrant County,” he said.
