Hunter Hawa would have turned 11 in April, his aunt, Jennifer Back, told a Chester County judge Wednesday.
But the boy known for his smile and laugh died three years ago on the filthy carpet in his parents’ Coatesville apartment. Prosecutors say he had fentanyl and cocaine in his system, powerful narcotics that his parents used and sold that ended his life before it had been given a chance to begin.
Mousa Hawa and Holly Back failed in their ultimate duty as parents to protect Hunter, according to Judge Analisa Sondergaard, who sentenced them both to decades in prison for their son’s murder.
“This was the culmination of many bad days and bad choices,” a visibly angry Sondergaard said. “You chose drugs over Hunter every single day. You put your wants and desires before your son every single day.
“You loved drugs more than your son.”
The couple was convicted of third-degree murder, aggravated assault, and endangering the welfare of a child after a trial in February.
Back was sentenced Wednesday to 20 to 40 years in prison, while Hawa was sentenced to 22½ to 45 years. Their sentences included a mandatory minimum of 15 years for third-degree murder of a victim under 13.
District Attorney Chris de Barrena-Sarobe said Wednesday that Sondergaard’s sentences were “justice for a child that deserved so much more.”
“This was a case about parents who continually disregarded every basic parental responsibility and allowed their child to ingest fentanyl and cocaine,” he said. “Because they chose to put themselves above their child, we prosecuted them to the fullest extent of the law.”
Their attorneys said both had been in the throes of drug addiction since their teenage years, and suffered from previously undiagnosed mental health conditions. Hunter’s death, they said, was a horrible accident.
In a tearful statement, Back said the images of her son, lying dead in her living room, are forever burned into her mind.
“I never meant to fail him,” the 42-year-old woman said. “I did not murder my son. The last thing I wanted to do was harm him.”
First Assistant District Attorney Erin O’Brien, who prosecuted the case, rebuked Back’s statement, saying the couple showed extreme indifference to their son and his health.
The two had kept their son in squalor in a home where drugs were “ubiquitous” — Hunter, she said, was surrounded by narcotics and the materials Hawa used to package them. Their attempts to prevent him from touching the toxic substances, she said, were half-hearted at best.
“Hunter didn’t get to make plans for his future; he didn’t even make it to the third grade,” she said. “I could attempt to go through everything he missed out in life, but that list is endless. His life mattered.”
Hawa had called police to his home on July 26, 2023, just before 2:30 a.m., after Back awakened him in a panic, prosecutors said. She had found Hunter “folded like a sandwich,” pinned between the recliner he had fallen asleep on hours earlier and the wall behind it.
When Coatesville Police Officer Jennifer Schreiber arrived at the home, Hawa was performing CPR on his son, who had ashen skin and blue lips. He showed no signs of life, Schreiber said.
Clear signs of drug abuse were found feet from the boy’s body: small glassine bags filled with heroin, cocaine, and methamphetamine, as well as a scale and a syringe.
Doses of Narcan sat unopened on a coffee table, and, O’Brien noted, might have saved the boy if used.
An autopsy later concluded that Hunter died of an overdose of fentanyl, morphine, and cocaine. Exactly how the boy ingested the drugs remains unclear. But samples of his hair showed that he had previously been exposed to those narcotics, according to O’Brien.
Hawa and Back initially lied about their drug use when interviewed by police, but confessed to being regular users weeks later when confronted with their son’s autopsy report, investigators said.
Hawa, 43, told detectives he did not believe his son had overdosed, saying the amount of the drugs found in his blood was too small to be fatal. He said he and Back had repeatedly warned the child not to touch the drugs in their home, telling him that it was their “medicine” and that he could get sick from it.
The fentanyl that killed Hunter was stamped with the same distinctive logo, “Bad Bunny,” as the kind that killed Tyler Stout in Phoenixville in March 2023.
Prosecutors also deemed Hawa responsible for Stout’s death, charging him with drug delivery resulting in death and related crimes. His trial in that case is pending.
