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Jul 22, 2023

Mother, boyfriend left disabled Lowcountry girl to die in hot car, solicitor says

WALTERBORO — Prosecutors elicited testimony on the first day of a murder trial Aug. 29 to cast Rita Pangalangan as a neglectful mother who intentionally left her 13-year-old disabled daughter inside a

WALTERBORO — Prosecutors elicited testimony on the first day of a murder trial Aug. 29 to cast Rita Pangalangan as a neglectful mother who intentionally left her 13-year-old disabled daughter inside a car for hours in the thick of summer.

The teen, Cristina Pangalangan, died of heatstroke on Aug. 5, 2019, inside a Volkswagen parked outside a residence on Lowcountry Highway in Colleton County.

Cristina was left in the car for five hours and 41 minutes after the mother and her then-boyfriend, Larry Eugene King Jr., placed the teen in the backseat while they were under the influence of methamphetamine, according to 14th Circuit Solicitor Duffie Stone, who is prosecuting the case.

Cristina suffered from cerebral palsy, which rendered her speechless and confined to a wheelchair. Her condition prevented her from opening the car door or shouting out for help.

Rita Pangalangan served as a schoolteacher for a quarter-century in Colleton County, where she was twice recognized as teacher of the year. She and King are standing trial in General Sessions Court this week on charges including murder, criminal conspiracy and unlawful conduct toward a child.

Despite her achievements teaching children, prosecutors contend Rita Pangalangan neglected her daughter.

Testimony from two women on Aug. 29 called into question the mother’s parenting.

Lindsay Lewis was an 18-year-old aspiring nurse in the summer of 2019. Pangalangan, her teacher, thought Lewis could gain experience taking care of Cristina, Lewis testified.

Cristina died on a Monday. The prior Friday evening, Lewis testified, she agreed to watch Cristina alone so that Pangalangan could go on a date with King. It was the first time she looked after the girl on her own. To the 18-year-old’s surprise, the mother did not return until Sunday evening, leaving her alone with the child all weekend. Rita Pangalangan told Lewis she was helping King recover from food poisoning.

Jurors also heard from Brittney Honeycutt, who paid rent in the summer of 2019 to live with the Pangalangans. Honeycutt said she watched Cristina on multiple occasions at the mother’s request.

On one occasion, Honeycutt said she could not watch Cristina because she had to go to work.

But the mother was persistent.

“She told me to leave Cristina in my car with the windows down because she does it all the time,” Honeycutt said.

Stone, the solicitor, painted a picture during his opening argument of a selfish mother who felt inconvenienced by her daughter’s special needs.

“(Cristina) was totally dependent on somebody else for her safety,” Stone said. “She died because those two people there treated that little girl like baggage. They didn’t put her in the car and forget her. They put her in the car because to them, she was baggage.”

To convict the defendants of murder, Stone must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Pangalangan and King intended to harm Cristina when they left her in the vehicle or that they demonstrated a reckless indifference to human life resulting in her death.

The state played hours of home surveillance footage from the day Cristina died. It began with King carrying Cristina into the backseat of the car. The courtroom became silent as the video played without audio. Jurors watched Pangalangan and King on screen as they argued on the porch, went back inside the house and returned outside, where they hugged and kissed.

All the while, the car — with Cristina inside — sat in the background under the sun.

The mother checked on the child at 12:15 p.m. She went to check on her daughter again at 3 p.m., but couldn’t gain entry into the locked vehicle. Pangalangan and King left the house to retrieve another set of keys. When they returned at 4:15 p.m., the girl was dead.

Dayne Phillips, a defense attorney representing the mother, offered that the case is a “nightmare” — but not a murder.

“What happened that day was an absolute tragedy. We know and accept that mistakes were made, that things should have been done differently,” he told jurors. “Don’t compound that tragedy by giving into what the government wants.”

This isn’t a murder case,” he argued. “There are consequences, but it’s not murder.”

Rita Pangalangan sat at a table in the corner of the courtroom, dressed in a navy blue pant suit and black ballet flats. A diminutive woman with blonde hair, she blotted her eyes with tissues, shook her head in disagreement and took notes as her parenting was examined under a microscope.

King, her co-defendant, sat a table over from his ex-girlfriend. The burly man with a curly, salt-and-pepper beard and shaved head wore a white button down shirt. His physical presence dominated Pangalangan’s in the courtroom, though he was rarely mentioned during testimony.

His lawyer, Gil Gatch, sought to distance his client from the mother and daughter during opening statements. Gatch said one of the worst mistakes King ever made was getting back together with Pangalangan. Cristina was not his child, the attorney stated, and was not in his custody.

Blood drawn from both King and Pangalangan the day the child died tested positive for methamphetamene. State Law Enforcement Division forensic toxicologist Lindsey Mitchell testified that the drug was active in their bodies, but it could have been consumed up to three days before the day Cristina died, she acknowledged.

Defense attorneys had sought to suppress that information, but were overruled.

The defense also sought to suppress photos from the crime scene, which showed the girl lying on grass with blisters covering her legs and wearing a soiled diaper. The heat index inside the vehicle reached 135 degrees, according to testimony from Andrew Grundstein, a climatology expert.

The defense said the images may inflame the passions of the jury and prejudice the defendants, citing a decision handed down this month by the South Carolina Supreme Court. The court reversed a Summerville woman’s 2019 murder conviction, finding gruesome autopsy photos presented to the jury unlawfully prejudiced the case against her.

Judge Clifton Newman overruled their objections. The photos were shown to the jury.

Cristina Pangalangan was the 19th child in South Carolina to die since 1998 of heatstroke inside a vehicle, according to noheatstroke.org, a national online database that tracks pediatric vehicular heatstroke fatalities. Three additional children have since died in the Palmetto State of vehicular heatstroke.

A dozen of the deaths occurred as a result of a caregiver unintentionally leaving the child in a car, according to the database. Four of the deaths occurred when the child gained access to a vehicle on their own. In the remaining six cases, a caregiver is alleged to have intentionally left the child in the car.

Reach Ema Schumer at [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter @emaschumer.

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