Former NFL player Cierre Wood has been sentenced to life in prison for the 2019 death of his girlfriend’s 5-year-old daughter.
Wood, 33, pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and felony child abuse. He will be eligible for parole for the murder charge after 10 years, but he must also serve between 28 months and six years for the child abuse charge. Judge Jacqueline Bluth ordered on Tuesday, August 13, that he must serve the sentences consecutively.
The child’s mother, Amy Taylor, also pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and felony child abuse.
On April 9, 2019, La’Rayah Davis was found unresponsive at Taylor’s Las Vegas home. She later died in the hospital from a series of injuries. An autopsy conducted by the Clark County coroner’s office later revealed Davis had a lacerated liver, 20 broken ribs, multiple skull contusions and bruises to her heart, diaphragm and connective tissue.
Taylor, 31, told police she had punished Davis by sitting on her. Wood said he punished her because he believed her to be overweight. The punishment included running sprints in the apartment and doing sit-ups and wall sits. He claimed that while she was doing sit-ups, Davis fell backward and hit her head on the floor.
NBC News 3 in Las Vegas reported that Wood told police he was “trying to get her on the right path due to her being chunky.”
Cierre Wood Ronald Martinez/Getty Images
La’Rayah split time with her mother in Nevada and father, Daunan Davis, in California.
“She had so many people that she touched, and she’s only 5,” Daunan told NBC at the time of La’Rayah’s death. “Her not to be alive and how much life she had, that’s the tragic thing about it.”
According to a plea agreement obtained by The Guardian, prosecutors dismissed additional counts of felony child abuse against Wood. He entered an Alford plea, also known as a best interests plea, which is a type of plea in which the defendant makes a formal admission of guilt in criminal court but can still claim innocence. This allows both sides to skip a criminal trial and requires the defendant to accept the consequences of a guilty verdict.
Wood was a running back for Notre Dame from 2009 to 2012, later signing with the Houston Texans of the NFL as an undrafted free agent. He spent time with five NFL teams and three teams in the Canadian Football League before the Montreal Alouettes released him in 2018.