A Mahanoy City woman will serve 16 to 32 years in state prison for smothering to death a 14-month old girl she was caring for.

Pietrina C. Hoffman, 54, did not visibly react as Schuylkill County President Judge William E. Baldwin pronounced sentence.A jury in June convicted Hoffman of third-degree murder and related charges in the death of Neveah N. Doyle.According to testimony, Hoffman took a cocktail of muscle relaxants, morphine and a liquid sleep aid before falling asleep the night of Jan. 9, 2016, and rolling off the couch onto the baby.But at her sentencing hearing Wednesday, Hoffman denied having taken any drugs at all that night.“I never took medication when I watched the kids,” she said.Hoffman claimed medical tests performed by the Children and Youth Services agency showed “nothing in my system.”Baldwin reminded her that she had told police she took the drugs.“They put you in a stupor. You couldn’t wake up if the children needed you,” he said.District Attorney Christine A. Holman asked Baldwin to sentence Hoffman to the maximum, 26 to 52 years.Hoffman’s lawyer, public defender Kent D. Watkins, asked for 10-20 years.Before pronouncing sentence, Hoffman’s husband, Glenn Williams, and best friend Kathy Haage, spoke.Neveah and her 2-year-old sister, Annabelle “Cece” Williams, were always with Hoffman and her husband, Haage said.Given that both Hoffman and Williams are on disability, Haage asked why they took so much responsibility for the girls.“They need us. They love us and we love them,” she said Hoffman replied.Hoffman and her husband considered themselves the girls’ grandparents.The girls had been given over by their birth mother, Autumn Williams, to Cecelia Sell Gray, then of Shenandoah, who had once dated Hoffman’s son.“In my heart, I know this had to be a tragic accident,” Haage said. of Neveah’s death.Williams described his wife as a caregiver, teaching the girls how to read and write, feeding them, bathing them, and taking them to doctors appointments.“She didn’t do anything with malice,” he said. “She wasn’t a vindictive person or hard like that.”Stopped breathingHolman pointed out that at one point, Hoffman told police she realized Neveah had stopped breathing at about 5 a.m. Jan. 10. But she made coffee, let the dogs out and then went back to sleep until about 2 p.m. Then called her husband, who was away, before calling 911.Hoffman said those hours “seemed like minutes.”“I thought it was 5:30 (a.m.). It was dark all day,” she said. “To me, it was just a couple of minutes.”“I would never hurt those kids. They were my life,” Hoffman said.Holman also referred to the drugs Hoffman had taken the night before.“They are not medications you would be taking or mixing when you’re watching young children,” she said.Watkins said a forensic expert testified at Hoffman’s trial that Neveah’s death could have been accidental.Further, he said, once she realized the child was dead, there was nothing she could have done. Watkins was referring to the hours that elapsed between Hoffman’s realization that Neveah had stopped breathing and her call to 911.Baldwin said that according to expert testimony at the trial, the baby could have survived had she gotten immediate medical help.Hoffman’s failure to call 911 immediately took “away any chance she had of survival.”Police charged Hoffman with third-degree murder, 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.After listening to two days of testimony, the jury on June 27 found her guilty of all but a drug paraphernalia charge.