A “blacked out” father left his 2-year-old daughter to die in the back of his burning car while he saved himself — and then lied to police about where she was before her charred body was discovered strapped in a car seat, cops said.
Nicholas Stemen, 34, was sentenced Monday to at least 22 years in prison for the horrific death of his daughter, Lillyanna, in September 2024 in northwest Ohio.
“My baby girl is gone. And for what? For her father enjoying a night of drinking? He killed her,” Lillyana’s mother wrote in a scathing letter read aloud in court during the sentencing hearing,
Stemen admitted he had just downed at least 10 drinks when he was seen by police driving erratically — and missing a tire — before he came to a stop in Lima and his car burst into flames with the young girl inside, according to the affidavit.
Police arrived at the scene and found the dad standing in the roadway “visibly upset” that his 2013 GMC Terrain was “fully engulfed in flames.”
The responding officer reported that he “could smell an odor of an alcoholic beverage emitting from Stemen’s person, and he was unsteady on his feet, actually falling to the ground,” the affidavit says.
He also had bloodshot eyes and slurred his speech, police noted in the document.
Stemen told fire officials that “no one” else was in the vehicle as they worked to extinguish the flames.
He said that he had a daughter — but claimed she was with her grandfather.
However when the fire battalion chief peeked inside the vehicle after the fire was extinguished, she spotted “a small body” in a car seat she determined was human “due to seeing skin and blood on the thighs,” according to the affidavit.
He later confessed to officers he had at least 10 drinks before the fire and that he had “blacked out.”
During his sentencing hearing on Monday, he admitted “no recollection” of what happened leading up to his daughter’s death.
He pleaded guilty last month to aggravated arson, involuntary manslaughter and endangering a child.
