John Jefferson
Background: Prisma Health Children’s Hospital in Columbia, S.C., where Hope Fields died in 2024 (Google Maps). Inset (left): Wilbur Fields (Richland County Detention Center). Inset (right): Hope Fields (Richland County Sheriff’s Office).
A South Carolina man will spend decades in prison for the fatal punishment he inflicted on his 4-year-old daughter.
Wilbur Fields, 35, was sentenced to 50 years in prison on March 3, just over a year after he was charged with the murder of his 4-year-old daughter Hope Fields. In February 2024, Fields and his wife Fifi Hill-Fields, 32, were both arrested after bringing their daughter to the hospital with first-degree burns. Hope was reportedly unresponsive when she arrived and spent two days on life support before succumbing to her injuries, according to reporting at the time by WJBF, a local ABC affiliate.
Fields admitted to investigators that he had punished Hope for having an accident in her pants by submerging her in scalding hot water.
Hill-Fields was also charged with murder, the same charge as Fields, and is awaiting her next court date. According to documents obtained by WJBF, she allegedly admitted that she was present for Hope’s punishment and aware of what happened to her daughter.
Richland County Sheriff Leon Lott said during a press conference at the time that police were alerted by hospital staff on Feb. 16, 2024, that a 4-year-old girl had been brought in with “severe burns, broken bones” and “cardiac arrest a couple times on the way to the hospital.” Lott stated that the investigation uncovered that “24 hours earlier, Hope’s father had put her in scalding water as punishment for going to the bathroom in her pants.”
Lott noted that there were three other children in the house at the time, and two of them had witnessed their sister’s horrific ordeal. He added that “the mom stood by and watched it. They watched Hope suffer.”
When Hope was taken off life support on Feb. 18, two days after her arrival, Lott said “her parents weren’t there.” Instead, three police investigators were there so Hope wouldn’t be alone when she passed away.
WACH, a local Fox affiliate, reported that the couple’s other three children were removed from the home by the Department of Social Services and provided investigators with information about the abuse their sister endured.
Fields was sentenced after pleading guilty to homicide caused by child abuse. Hill-Fields faces the same charge and a court date has yet to be announced.
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