Murders of the Castro and Youngblood children

On 5 August 2018, Veronica Youngblood murdered her daughters Sharon Castro and Brooklynn Youngblood, aged 15 and 5 respectively in their apartment in McLean, Virginia. She was sentenced to 78 years in prison.

Veronica Youngblood
Veronica Youngblood grew up in poverty in Argentina. As a child she was physically and sexually abused, and as a teenager she became a sex worker to take care of her eldest daughter, who she had at age 16. In 2009 she married her ex-husband Ronald in Las Vegas. Because of his job in the US Navy, the couple travelled around a lot but settled in Virginia, and were divorced in 2016. According to the ex-husband Ron Youngblood, previous to the murders Veronica tried to use the girls to leverage him.

Background
Youngblood and her husband, Ron Youngblood were set to move to Missouri, but Veronica Youngblood changed her mind and decided to stay in Virginia. The husband moved with his biological daughter, Brooklyn, after a judge decided that she could move with him. Youngblood had a custody dispute with her ex-husband, which he had won.

Timeline
Youngblood bought the handgun used in the killings nine days before the killings.

Killings
The murders took place on August 5, 2018. Youngblood gave the children sleeping pill gummies, and then shot them in their bed. Brooklynn was shot in the head and Sharon was shot in her chest and back. Brooklynn died at the scene. After the shooting, Sharon called 911 to tell dispatchers that she had been shot, and that the mother was the shooter. When Brooklynn was lying down as she was dying, Youngblood called the husband to tell him that she hated him and had shot the children. Sharon later died in hospital. The mother was arrested in August 2018.

Investigations
Youngblood told detectives that the incident was due to a long custody dispute, and that she intended to kill both herself and the children. She said that she deserved the death penalty, which had been abolished in Virginia in 2021.

Trial
The trial took two weeks. Youngblood pleaded insanity, claiming that she heard voices. This was rejected. After hearing Sharon's 911 call, which included the phrases "I don't want to die", jurors requested trauma therapy. Youngblood was described by Fairfax County Assistant Commonwealth's Attorney Kelsey Gill as "malicious, selfish and [a] deliberate killer", and saying that the case "goes well beyond merely having a mental illness. This goes well beyond depression. This goes well beyond PTSD. This goes well beyond being suicidal." She was convicted on March 26, 2023, of two counts of murder, and two counts of the use of firearms to commit murder. Prosecutors said that killing the children was revenge against her ex-husband. The jurors took a day to name her guilty.

Sentence
Youngblood was sentenced to 78 years in prison. The defense requested that instead of the sentences being served consecutively, they be served concurrently. This would have reduced the total sentence from 78 to 48 years. Judge Randy Bellows said that there was no reason to reduce the sentence, and that under state law, he had no ability to decrease it. He said "Mothers and fathers have many responsibilities, but none is more grave than keeping their children safe ... Tragically, their mother became the instrument of their death."

Before the sentencing, Youngblood spent half an hour talking about the difficulties she had raising her children. She said in Spanish that she had been a good mother, and that she was unsure what happened, saying "Something exploded in my mind."