A judge imposed a 10- to 25-year sentence after a second-degree murder plea in the 2024 death of 2-year-old Fofogafeta Maluia Fields.

LAS VEGAS, Nev. — A North Las Vegas man was sentenced in March to 10 to 25 years in prison after pleading guilty to second-degree murder in the death of his 2-year-old niece, a child he had been babysitting when police said he covered her mouth until she stopped breathing.

Leo’oolo Tevaseu, 23, admitted guilt in January in the April 18, 2024, killing of Fofogafeta Maluia Fields. The sentence, imposed by Eighth Judicial District Court Judge Tierra Jones, closed the criminal case’s main chapter and put a formal end to a prosecution that began with an emergency call from a Mercury Street apartment in North Las Vegas.

The case began at about 11 a.m. on April 18, 2024, when North Las Vegas police responded to the 3400 block of Mercury Street after a report of a small child not breathing. First responders found the girl without a pulse on a dining room table, and she was taken to University Medical Center, where she was later pronounced dead. Investigators said Tevaseu had been watching his sister’s children while she went out on errands. At first, according to police records, he said the child suddenly collapsed. He later gave other versions, including one in which she fell after appearing sick and another in which he said he struck her leg and face and hit her with a pillow.

Detectives said those early explanations did not match the injuries they were seeing. In the final version described in charging records, Tevaseu said the child would not stop crying, so he slapped her, hit her with a pillow, then picked her up “like a baby” and kept his hand over her mouth for about 30 seconds until she was “huffing and puffing.” Police said he then placed her on the floor, realized she was not breathing, tried giving her water and then began CPR. Records say he called the child’s mother only after several minutes of those efforts. The mother later told investigators the toddler had no known medical problems and had been healthy before that morning.

The setting of the case sharpened the stakes from the start. Police said the child was in the care of a close relative inside a family apartment, not with a stranger or in a public place. The girl’s mother told investigators that Tevaseu, her younger brother, was her main source of child care while she worked a night shift. She also said he sometimes became frustrated with the children, according to the police account. That detail gave investigators a clearer picture of the hours before the death and why prosecutors later treated the case as an intentional killing rather than an accident or unexplained medical emergency.

The prosecution ended in a plea instead of a trial. Tevaseu pleaded guilty in January to one count of second-degree murder. By the time of sentencing in late March 2026, the agreement called for a prison term of 10 to 25 years, which Jones accepted. Court records and published accounts identify the sentence as one that carries parole eligibility after 10 years. Prosecutors did not take the case to a jury, and no public trial testimony was needed to establish the facts laid out in police reports. That left the plea hearing and sentencing as the main procedural milestones after the arrest on murder and child abuse allegations in 2024.

The story that remains is a stark one built from emergency response records, police interviews and court filings. A toddler was rushed from a North Las Vegas apartment to a hospital and never came home. Her mother’s account to police described an ordinary reliance on family for overnight child care that ended in a homicide case. Tevaseu’s own statements became a central part of the prosecution as detectives pressed him over versions that changed from collapse, to fall, to physical assault, and finally to suffocation. The child’s name, Fofogafeta Maluia Fields, remained at the center of the case as it moved from the apartment scene to the courthouse.

Tevaseu has been sentenced and the case stands resolved through the plea agreement unless future appeals or post-conviction filings change its course. The next formal milestone would come through the prison and parole process tied to the 10- to 25-year term.

Author note: Last updated April 20, 2026.