A Mahanoy City woman accused of smothering a toddler who took a muscle relaxant, morphine and a liquid sleep aid hours before the baby died has been found guilty of third-degree murder by a jury.

The jury came back around 1:30 p.m. in the case against Pietrina C. Hoffman, who was known to the toddler as a grandmother. She was found guilty on all but a drug paraphernalia charge in the death of 14-month-old Nevaeh N. Doyle. The toddler died sometime between Jan. 9 and Jan. 10, 2016.The other charges are aggravated assault, persons not to possess or use firearms, endangering the welfare of children and two counts of recklessly endangering another person, prohibited offensive weapons and possession of drug paraphernalia.Hoffman, who is also known as Pietrina C. Williams, is represented by public defender Kent D. Watkins.District Attorney Christine A. Holman and Assistant District Attorney Debra A. Smith prosecuted the case.No bail was set following the verdict and Williams was taken into custody. She sobbed as she embraced her husband and a friend.Nevaeh and her 2-year-old sister, Annabelle “Cece” Williams, had been given over by their birth mother, Autumn Williams, to Cecelia Sell Gray, then of Shenandoah, who had once dated Hoffman’s son.Gray testified Tuesday that she told Hoffman that Cece was her child with Hoffman’s son, even though it was not true.She raised the girls from birth, Gray said, but they split their time between her and Hoffman and her husband.Nevaeh was a happy baby, Gray testified. She called Hoffman “Mom-mom” and Hoffman’s husband, Glenn Williams, “Pop-pop.”Gray testified that Nevaeh went for a dayslong visit on Jan. 7, 2016, and Cece joined her there at about 9:30 p.m. Jan. 9.Her texts to Hoffman at 10 a.m. and 11 a.m. Jan. 10 went unanswered, she said, as did a phone call.EmergencyIt was sometime after 2 p.m. that Glenn Williams called her to say there was an emergency at Hoffman’s house.Gray immediately went there and saw Cece being carried out of the house.“She was dirty, and she said, ‘Mom-mom said I killed Nevaeh,’ ” Gray testified, weeping.Rentschler said he was dispatched to Hoffman’s home at 2:24 p.m. Jan. 10. He arrived to find Nevaeh partially covered with a blanket, lying dead on the floor of a dirty, cluttered living room, amid what appeared to be coffee grounds.Cece sat on the sofa, “just looking down at her sister,” he said.Jurors were shown photographs that Rentschler, who is also an EMT, had taken of Nevaeh and the room.The baby was obviously dead, he said. Her lips were blue and her face a mottled purple.Hoffman was sitting at a table in an adjacent room, making phone calls.He took Cece into the room with Hoffman, who told him that when she discovered Nevaeh was dead when she woke at 2 p.m., she had called her husband, who told her to call 911.In the call, Hoffman told a dispatcher “I have a dead baby” and said her granddaughter fell on the baby, and when she woke up, the baby was dead.Hoffman told Rentschler she had “tried to open the baby’s mouth, but it was stiff.”Different timelinesRentschler later said Hoffman, who seemed confused, gave several different timelines.She said she had gone to sleep at 8 or 9 p.m. Jan. 9, then said it was 2 a.m. She woke at 2 p.m. Jan. 10.She also said she woke at 2 a.m. and stepped over Neveah to get to the bathroom, and another time said she woke at 5 a.m. and realized Neveah was dead, but went back to sleep until 2 p.m.Hoffman told Rentschler she had taken two Soma pills, her husband’s morphine pill, and ZzzQuil before going to sleep on Jan. 9.She also admitted to giving 10-20 Soma pills on Jan. 9 to a neighbor who had run out.State Police Cpl. Wesley J. Levan II of the Reading barracks also testified to a garbled timeline when he interviewed Hoffman on Feb. 11, 2016, at the Frackville barracks.Hoffman told him she could not remember what happened that night, and that she “blacked out.”“I’m trying to figure out what happened,” she told Levan. “Obviously something happened, because she’s gone.”Nevaeh could have been saved had she been resuscitated immediately, said forensic pathologist Neil A. Hoffman of Reading, Berks County, who performed the autopsy on Nevaeh on Jan. 14.She had died at least four hours before Hoffman called 911, he said.He determined Nevaeh had died of smothering by asphyxiation, by an adult falling on her and then staying on her for at least two minutes.Inexplicably, there were 2 ounces of coffee grounds in Nevaeh’s stomach and a small amount of caffeine in her blood, he said.She had a small cut on the inside of her lower lip, abrasions on the right side of her forehead and between her eyes, a bruise on her thigh, a contusion on her scalp, and tiny hemorrhages in the muscle in her neck and on her face, and in the soft tissue around her kidneys.The most likely cause of death,” he said, was an impact to the back of her body that lasted at least a couple of minutes, and the child died as a result of that.“That was consistent with an adult, not a child, falling on the baby and staying there,” Dr. Hoffman said.Others testifyEmergency responders affiliated with Citizens Fire Company and Mahanoy City EMS, testified.Fire captain Justin S. Shapansky testified that he was dispatched to the home at 2:24 p.m. on a cardiac arrest call, but found the door locked. After a few minutes, Hoffman opened the door.George Brill, an emergency medical services volunteer, said he arrived at the house moments after Shapansky entered.He saw Hoffman sitting at a table in an adjacent room. Nevaeh was cold, and her face was blue.Emergency Medical Technician Brian W. Musolino said Nevaeh was obviously dead when responders arrived.Assistant Ambulance Chief John J. Bowman Jr. testified the house was “a mess, in a deplorable condition, really cluttered.”Schuylkill County Deputy Coroner Scott P. Clewes testified he pronounced Nevaeh dead at 2:50 p.m. Jan. 10.Registered nurse Taffi Zartman testified she was working in the emergency department at Geisinger when Cece was brought in to be examined.The child had an upper respiratory infection (Hoffman said she had taken her to an urgent care center the day before), a slight rash on her privates, scarlike areas on her chest, and marks on her buttocks and a round red mark on her cheek.She weighed 33 pounds.Watkins moved to have a section of the endangerment charge that had been based on a urine test that indicated a state of starvation dropped because no testimony supported it.Holman said she would not pursue that section.Police searching Hoffman’s house found a rifle and ammunition, a device for ingesting marijuana and other drugs, and several bottles of medications.Hoffman is prohibited from having weapons due to a previous felony conviction for armed robbery.The defense is expected to present arguments when the trial resumes today.