Update; Bronx Woman Is Sentenced In Killing of Her Niece

A 36-year-old Bronx woman who pleaded guilty last month to killing a 6-year-old niece in her care as a foster child has been sentenced to 4 to 12 years in prison.

The incident raised questions at the time about how the state monitors what is known as kinship care, in which a family member, usually a grandmother, becomes a foster parent. In 1991, three children died in foster care, two of whom were in kinship care families, according to the city's Human Resources Adminstration.

The woman, Mary Ann Ayala, of the Bedford Park section, had been charged with second-degree murder in the death last February of her niece, Millicent, and the attempted murder of a second niece in her care, Stephanie, who was 4 at the time.

Ms. Ayala began caring for her two nieces in 1989, after the children's father -- Ms. Ayala's brother -- went to jail on drug charges.

Prosecutors said that Ms. Ayala exploded after the girls ate her Valentine's Day candy. She beat Millicent with a shoe and immersed them both in a tub of cold water. Milicent died of hypothermia.

In October, Ms. Ayala pleaded guilty to manslaughter. She was sentenced on Thursday before Justice Vincent A. Vitale in State Supreme Court in the Bronx. She will be eligible for parole in four years.