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Sherita Nicole McNeil was sentenced to life in prison without parole after a Wake County jury convicted her on Aug. 19, 2010, of first-degree murder in the death of her 19-month-old son, DeVarion Gross, whose body had been found hidden in a bedroom closet in Garner.

Family members found DeVarion on Nov. 14, 2008, wrapped in two plastic bags inside a trash bin at a home on Spring Drive, police said. The container had been doused with bleach to cover the smell, and the child was wearing only a diaper. Investigators said the boy had last been seen alive on Oct. 3.

The grandmother contacted police after relatives went more than a month without seeing the boy, according to trial testimony. McNeil, 23, had told the family that DeVarion was staying with a close friend, Garner Police Chief Tom Moss said. "Sherita McNeil repeatedly lied to family, friends and others about her son's welfare and whereabouts," Moss said.

Wake County Child Protective Services had received two reports raising concern about the boy before his death and forwarded its findings to Garner police, but no one had located him, authorities said. McNeil was charged on Jan. 22, 2009, with first-degree murder and concealing the death of a person.

At McNeil's trial in August 2010, a state medical examiner, Dr. Maryanne Gaffney-Kraft, testified that DeVarion had three rib fractures in different stages of healing and that his death was caused by "undetermined homicidal violence." She said the injuries did not match the defense's account that the boy died after falling from a couch. Prosecutors said McNeil had abused the child for weeks.

The jury convicted McNeil of first-degree murder and concealing a death on Aug. 19, 2010, according to WRAL and North Carolina Department of Adult Correction records. DeVarion's father, Eric Chambers, was incarcerated at the time of the boy's death and, prosecutors said, had written letters expressing concern about the child.