RED LAKE, Minn. — A Red Lake woman has been found guilty of felony child neglect following the 2022 death of a child in her care on the Red Lake Indian Reservation in northern Minnesota.
Sharon Rosebear, 63, and her co-defendant, Julius Fineday Sr., were both federally charged in 2023 after the child’s death, the U.S. attorney’s office said in Minneapolis. Rosebear was charged with felony child neglect resulting in substantial harm, and Fineday was charged with second-degree manslaughter.
According to evidence presented at trial, Rosebear intentionally deprived the girl of necessary food and health care throughout 2022. The evidence showed that the girl died from the effects of starvation and infection, according to the federal prosecutors.
The evidence shown at trial established that, as one of the girl’s caretakers, Rosebear was able to provide for her nutrition and health care, yet she “intentionally deprived (the child) of those basic needs by withholding food and by looking the other way while (the child’s) health deteriorated.”
This included evidence revealing that health care and transportation to receive it are free within the Red Lake Nation and that “all of the adults and children involved in the case received nutritional and cash assistance adequate to meet their basic need,” prosecutors said.
According to authorities, the girl died at the same weight she had been nearly three years earlier. Evidence also showed that Rosebear was aware of the girl’s severe lice infestation but that she kept the child isolated instead of seeking medical attention for her.
Medical testimony showed that the type of infection the girl had when she died could have entered her body through scratches in her scalp related to the untreated lice.
The testimony also established that the girl’s prolonged starvation may have been “an independently sufficient cause of death, or may have severely compromised (the child’s) immune system’s ability to fight infection,” authorities said.
Following a six-day trial in U.S. District Court, Rosebear was found guilty of felony child neglect. Fineday entered a guilty plea before his trial in March 2022.
Their sentencing hearings will be scheduled at a later date.
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