NEW HAVEN, Conn.—A Connecticut woman has been sentenced to 40 years in prison for suffocating her 8-year-old son and then setting their house on fire.
Prosecutors said Karin Ziolkowski killed her son, Elijah, in their Meriden home on Nov. 14, 2016, and then used tiki torch oil to set two fires. Rescuers could not resuscitate the boy, whose death was ruled a homicide by asphyxia.
Ziolkowski was arrested in October 2017 in North Carolina. She was sentenced Tuesday to four decades in state prison for murder and 10 years for arson, to be served concurrently. A Superior Court jury in New Haven found her guilty on both charges on Nov. 8, 2022.
“Though nothing can bring back Elijah or lessen the pain of his loved ones, we hope today’s prison sentence brings Elijah’s family some measure of peace now that the person responsible for his senseless and unimaginable death has been brought to justice,” New Haven State’s Attorney John P. Doyle Jr. said in a statement.
