A 25-year-old former caregiver in Minnesota will serve more than a decade in prison for killing a 3-year-old boy who was beaten to death last year after months of physical abuse. According to court documents reviewed by Law&Crime, Clay County District Court Judge Tammy L. Merkins on Thursday sentenced Rosa Esperanza Garza to 20 years in a state correctional facility for the 2024 slaying of young Eastyn James Deronjic.
Garza pleaded guilty last month to one count of second-degree murder in relation to Eastyn’s death. According to Minnesota state law, Garza, who now goes by “Mason Garza,” must serve at least two-thirds of her sentence in prison, which is just over 13 years, and the remaining one-third on supervised probation.
Shiann Lynn Erickson, 23, Garza’s co-defendant in the case, has also been charged with second-degree murder. She has pleaded not guilty to the charge and is scheduled to go to trial later this year.
As previously reported by Law&Crime, officers from the Moorhead Police Department and emergency medical personnel responded to an apartment complex in the 1500 block of Belsly Boulevard South in Moorhead at 1:09 a.m. on March 18, 2024, for a 3-year-old child who was not breathing. The home is approximately 230 miles northwest of Minneapolis.
When first responders arrived, they discovered the severely bruised child, later identified as Eastyn, and performed life-saving procedures before transporting him to Sanford Hospital by ambulance. Unfortunately, the child succumbed to his injuries and was pronounced dead soon after arriving at the facility.
According to police, Eastyn and his younger sibling had been staying with Garza and Erickson in their Moorhead home for “an extended period.” Garza and Erickson were described as “acquaintances” with the children’s biological parents.
After Eastyn died, his younger sister was removed from the house and placed in protective custody.
The Ramsey County Medical Examiner’s Office performed an autopsy on Eastyn but did not release any information about his cause of death while officials awaited the results of a toxicology screening.
According to court documents, authorities received Eastyn’s autopsy report on June 28, 2024, which determined that the child died as a homicide from a blunt force injury that perforated his bowel. In addition to the fatal blow, Eastyn sustained 28 other blunt force injuries throughout his body.
A witness told police that she went to the defendants’ home around 1 a.m. on the night of Eastyn’s death to watch him and his sister because Garza needed to take Erickson to the hospital for an illness. The witness stated that when she arrived at the house, Eastyn appeared sick and was vomiting up whatever he had eaten. The boy asked the witness for a glass of water, but then coughed and gagged, becoming unresponsive. He was declared dead at the hospital less than two hours later.
The children’s mother informed police that she had not seen her children in about two weeks. When she last saw them, she believed Eastyn’s bruises were the result of his lack of coordination. She last spoke with the boy a few hours before his death, and he sounded sick but fine, according to the complaint.
Garza and Erickson claimed that the bruises on Eastyn’s face occurred the day before his death. They claimed he was vomiting on the toilet and passed out, hitting his head. Garza also claimed that the boy had fallen from his bike and skateboard that day.
Erickson claimed Garza had been abusive to her in the past, but she had never seen him be violent with Eastyn. That claim was undermined when the couple handed over their phones to police.
Erickson was fighting with Garza on March 17, 2024, the day Eastyn died, and wrote, “Ok, have fun with your little b—-.” “Go beat up her kid.”