Oakmont woman gets life in prison for starvation, torture death of 3-year-old girl

No one was there.

No one sat in the courtroom gallery wearing shirts that read “Justice for Bella.”

No one told the judge what a great 3-year-old that Bella Seachrist was. How she loved to dance and would eat anything. How she was a giggly, bubbly, playful and loving child.

The only people who attended the sentencing for Bella Seachrist’s stepmother, convicted of first-degree murder in the child’s June 2020 death, were the Oakmont police officers and Allegheny County detectives who worked the case.

“It is an additional tragedy no one else is here for Bella,” said Deputy District Attorney Jennifer DiGiovanni.

Laura Ramriez, 31, of Oakmont, was found guilty following a nonjury trial in July before Allegheny County Common Pleas Judge Bruce Beemer.

On Wednesday, she was ordered to serve the rest of her life in state prison with no chance for parole, plus 37 to 74 years.

Ramriez, along with her sister Alexis Herrera and Bella’s father Jose Salazar-Ortiz Sr., were charged with killing the 3-year-old following 10 months of repeated abuse.

Salazar-Ortiz was found guilty of third-degree murder and was ordered in August to serve 33 to 66 years in prison.

Trial for Herrera is scheduled for January.

“This was such a prolonged, sustained and cruel treatment of a defenseless 3-year-old and was made more prolonged and more cruel by the conspiratorial nature of what occurred in that house,” Beemer said.

Bella was found unresponsive in the family’s home on 10th Street in Oakmont on June 9. She was taken to the hospital and died there.

The girl’s cause of death was “malnutrition and failure to thrive.”

During their investigation, police learned that Bella was born out of an extramarital affair her father had.

In August 2017, he got custody of Bella and kept her for about a year. Salazar-Ortiz Sr. and Ramriez then sent the girl to live with family in North Carolina in 2018, where she remained until September 2019.

During that time, witnesses at trial said Bella was healthy and thriving.

However, soon after she went to live with her father and stepmother in Oakmont, her condition quickly began to deteriorate.

Citing images and videos found on cellphones belonging to Ramriez and Herrera, police said the women abused Bella repeatedly.

She was repeatedly punched and kicked, locked in a closet and forced to stand in a corner with one leg raised for extended periods of time.

The women beat her with a wooden spoon and belt and subjected her to extreme sexual abuse, police said.

Some images showed Bella being bound and gagged with a blindfold over her eyes. A video showed her being beaten and kicked by one of the four boys living in the house.

“I don’t know that I’ve ever seen this level of malice — not only in the death, but the humiliation, the mocking,” Beemer said Wednesday.

Beemer cited evidence from the trial in which Ramriez called Bella a variety of expletives, referring to her as “a little animal” and repeating that she was going to beat her.

“Then, when you step back and realize this is a 3-year-old child, old enough to recognize the pain, humiliation, the mocking, the fear she must have felt.”

Beemer contrasted Ramriez’s treatment of Bella with that of her own sons in the home, who he said were well cared for.

He called her crime unconscionable.

Ramriez did not make any statement on her own behalf, and her defense attorney Frank Walker, did not speak much, noting that the penalty is a mandatory life term.

Ramriez plans to appeal.

“My brother’s interested in hiring private counsel,” she said.