Za’Naya’s killer deserves harsher than a plea deal

We now know the consequence for beating a child and starving her literally to death. Short answer: not enough. Not nearly enough. Maybe you remember the story of Za’Naya Flores. The Tucson tot was born in 2010 and immediately put into foster care while her 21-year-old mother, Kiyana Higgins, awaited trial on charges that she’d broken the leg of another of her children. (Za’Naya’s father was headed to prison for cutting Higgins and choking her with a TV-cable cord.)

Higgins was acquitted when Za’Naya was 2 months old, and Child Protective Services immediately began making plans to reunify the mother with her five children — never mind the kids’ descriptions to police of the beatings they had endured.

According to CPS records, a fostercare specialist tried to warn Za’Naya’s caseworker to take a closer look, noting Higgins’ lack of interest in the child. It seems the mother never attended a single one of her baby’s doctor appointments despite being invited “countless” times by the foster mother.

The caseworker’s response: “I think it is presumptive to suggest there is a lack of interest with the mother because she has not attended the doctor’s appointments.”

You know how the story goes from there. CPS returns Za’Naya to her mother, a judge closes the case … and eight months after leaving foster care, Za’Naya is dead.

“To see her beaten rag-doll body in that baby casket at her funeral broke my heart and made me weep,” her pediatrician told me last week. “This should not have happened.”

The pediatrician, who asked not to be named, was Za’Naya’s doctor during her first year, while in foster care.

At her one-year checkup in late March 2011, shortly before she was returned to her mother, Za’Naya weighed a healthy 21 pounds, 6 ounces, he said.

At her death in early January 2012, she weighed just over 14 pounds. Her body was covered in bruises, burns, bite marks and scars — 21 scars, in all.

She died of starvation. Or maybe it was death by reunification.

The pediatrician says that based on Za’Naya’s size at the time of her death, the abuse had to have started soon after she was returned to her mother. Yet everyone walked away. Higgins was set to go to trial last month for first-degree murder and child abuse. Instead, Pima County prosecutors offered her a plea deal.

Instead of life, she’ll get 20 years for killing Za’Naya when she is sentenced for second-degree murder, with perhaps another five tacked on for abuse that left her son hospitalized.

Higgins will likely be free by the time she’s 50.

Deputy Pima County Attorney Julie Sottosanti told me she can’t talk about the case until after Higgins is sentenced on July 10.

Maybe there’s a good reason to give a break to a mother who allowed her daughter to endure hell on Earth before she finally left this place, beaten, bitten and starved literally to death.

I just can’t imagine what it would be.