Mom who starved 2-year-old son to death learns her fate

Background: The Macomb County Circuit Court in Mt. Clemens, Mich. (Google Maps). Inset: Sierra Pearl Zaitona (Macomb County Jail).

A Michigan woman convicted of the second-degree murder of her toddler son was sentenced to decades behind bars this week.

Sierra Pearl Zaitona, 29, pleaded no contest to one charge of second-degree homicide and one charge of second-degree child abuse two years after the starvation death of her 2-year-old son.

Zaitona, along with the boy’s father, Jonathon Matthew Cheek, 26, were arrested in March 2023 after calling 911 when they found their son unresponsive in his crib. Prosecutors accused the couple, who were the biological parents of the child, of starving him to death.