Police said the toddler’s mother relied on her younger brother for overnight child care before he admitted killing the girl during an April 2024 babysitting shift.
NORTH LAS VEGAS, Nev. — The death of 2-year-old Fofogafeta Maluia Fields grew out of a family child care arrangement that had become part of daily life, according to police records, and ended with her uncle, Leo’oolo Tevaseu, receiving a 10- to 25-year prison sentence after pleading guilty to second-degree murder.
The case matters beyond its courtroom result because the people involved were closely tied to one another. Investigators said the child’s mother depended on Tevaseu, her younger brother, as her primary source of child care while she worked nights. That relationship framed nearly every part of the public record: why the child was with him that morning, why the mother answered his call, and why the case carried the added weight of a killing inside a family network rather than by an outsider.
According to police, the morning itself looked ordinary until it did not. On April 18, 2024, the mother left the apartment while Tevaseu watched her children. Officers were called to the 3400 block of Mercury Street at about 11 a.m. after a report of a toddler who was not breathing. The girl was found without a pulse on a dining room table and taken to University Medical Center, where she was pronounced dead. In the first rush of the investigation, Tevaseu told detectives the child had suddenly collapsed while he was babysitting and that he could not get her to respond.
That explanation did not hold. Investigators said Tevaseu gave several different stories as detectives examined the child’s injuries and continued questioning him. One version suggested she was sick and fell. Another included slapping her face and leg and hitting her with a pillow. The account that became central to the case was more direct. Police said he told detectives the toddler would not stop crying, so he picked her up like a baby and put his hand over her mouth for about 30 seconds until she was “huffing and puffing.” He then said he tried water, began CPR and called the child’s mother after several minutes.
The mother’s statement to police gave the home life around the case a sharper outline. She said the toddler had no medical issues and was generally healthy. She also said Tevaseu sometimes became frustrated with the girls. That comment, placed next to his final admission, offered investigators a motive rooted in impatience and anger rather than panic over a sudden illness. It also showed how the routines families build under work and money pressure can become part of a homicide investigation once something goes wrong inside the home.
By the time the case reached its final court phase, the prosecution no longer needed to test those facts before a jury. Tevaseu pleaded guilty in January 2026 to second-degree murder in the child’s death. Judge Tierra Jones accepted the plea agreement in March and sentenced him to 10 to 25 years in prison. Published court coverage said the deal included parole eligibility after 10 years. The plea closed off a full trial but fixed the outcome: a felony murder conviction, a long prison term and a record that tied the child’s death to violence committed during a routine babysitting arrangement.
What remains most striking is how small the public setting was. A family apartment, a sibling asked to help with child care, errands that took the mother out of the home and a dining room table where medics found the child without a pulse. Those details do not change the legal result, but they explain why the case continues to land with unusual force. It was built not around strangers, but around dependence, trust and a fatal breach of both.
As of April 20, 2026, the criminal case is resolved through sentencing, and the next steps fall to the prison system and any future parole proceedings or post-conviction filings. No further public hearing date has been widely reported.
Author note: Last updated April 20, 2026.