The sentencing followed a guilty plea that removed a possible death penalty trial.
LAS VEGAS — A Clark County judge told a Nevada mother she would remember the case forever before sentencing her to life without parole for drowning her two young children in 2021.
The sentence against Jovan Trevino, 38, brought a final courtroom answer to the deaths of Christopher Fox III, 4, and Gihanna Fox, 1. Trevino pleaded guilty to two counts of first-degree murder as part of an agreement that ended the possibility of a death penalty trial. Clark County District Judge Carli Kierny imposed life in a state correctional facility with no chance of parole. The hearing placed the judge’s words, the family’s grief and the prosecution’s description of the killings into the final record.
Kierny addressed Trevino directly after hearing the apology, the family statement and arguments from both sides. The judge said she could sense Trevino’s sadness, but said the only proper sentence was life in prison without parole. “I know that as you live out the rest of your life in a jail cell, you’ll probably see them at night, you’ll think of them,” Kierny said. “That’s really the only tribute left that you can give them at this point.” She then told Trevino, “I will remember your case forever.” The comment followed a hearing shaped by the weight of two child victims and the details of their deaths.
Trevino had been facing the death penalty before the plea agreement. Prosecutors had prepared to try her on two first-degree murder counts in the 2021 killings. By pleading guilty, she admitted killing both children and accepted a sentence that removed any chance of parole. The agreement changed the legal path of the case from a capital trial to a sentencing hearing, but it did not soften the facts placed before the court. Prosecutors said Trevino killed the children in separate bathtubs inside the family home in Henderson, a city southeast of Las Vegas.
Chief Deputy District Attorney John Giordani called Trevino’s actions “unforgivable” and said the case was one of the most extreme of its kind he had seen during 15 years as a prosecutor. The state’s account described a sequence that began when Trevino brought Christopher into a bathroom and gave him glasses, telling him he could use them to see underwater. Once he was in the tub, prosecutors said, Trevino held him underwater for about three to four minutes using her hand and leg. She then went to another bathroom and drowned Gihanna in a separate tub, according to the case record.
The prosecution used the separation between the two deaths to show intent. Officials said the children were not killed in one sudden event, but in distinct acts inside the home. Christopher was old enough to follow his mother’s words into the bathroom, while Gihanna was still a toddler. Those differences made the details harder for the courtroom to hear and underscored why prosecutors treated the case as aggravated. The state also pointed to Trevino’s former position as a family services assistant for the Clark County Department of Family Services, a job connected to child welfare, though the killings involved her own children.
Trevino’s defense did not deny the killings after the plea. Defense attorney Ryan Bashor focused on her condition before and during the crimes, saying she had faced extreme life stressors and the breakdown of her relationship with the children’s father. Trevino also spoke to the judge, saying the deaths happened “at the hands of their mommy.” She said she was not in her right mind and described the period as the darkest place she had ever been. The statements gave the defense a frame of mental distress, but the court did not treat that frame as a basis for a sentence other than life without parole.
The children’s father, Christopher Fox, had previously testified that Trevino expressed suicidal thoughts just days before the drownings. According to that testimony, Trevino said she could not leave the children in the world if she was not there with them. That statement became part of the broader record about her mental state. It did not change the legal conclusion that Christopher and Gihanna were murdered. The case left unresolved personal questions about what might have been seen before July 19, 2021, but the court’s task at sentencing was narrower: to decide the legal punishment for two admitted murders.
The children’s grandmother, Shawna Fox, gave the hearing its clearest family voice. She told Trevino she had “failed miserably” as a mother and said she hoped Trevino would see the children’s faces whenever she closed her eyes. Her statement answered Trevino’s apology with anger and grief. It also shifted attention from Trevino’s mental state to the children’s lost lives. Family impact statements often help courts place a crime in human terms, and here the words served that role. They named the harm as more than a legal count, stressing futures, relationships and everyday moments that ended with the drownings.
The case had moved through several locations before sentencing. Investigators said Trevino wrote a suicide note after the killings and left Nevada for Arizona. She was later taken into custody at a medical center in Bullhead City after hospital staff were told about the deaths. That contact helped bring law enforcement into the case. From there, the matter returned to Clark County, where charges were filed and the case moved toward a potential capital trial. The guilty plea in 2026 avoided jury selection, testimony and a penalty phase, but it also locked in a sentence from which Trevino cannot be released.
As the hearing ended, the judge’s statement became the defining line of the final proceeding. Trevino will serve life without parole in a Nevada state prison. No parole board review is expected, and no trial date remains on the calendar. The record now stands with two murder convictions, two child victims and a sentence meant to last until Trevino’s death.
Author note: Last updated June 15, 2026.