A man has pleaded guilty to the death of a 5-year-old girl living in their Kansas homeless camp

A man who lived in a makeshift camp with a homeless 5-year-old Kansas girl and her father pleaded guilty Friday to first-degree murder and rape in connection with the child’s death.

Mickel Cherry’s plea in Shawnee County District Court in Topeka means he will not face the death penalty. Cherry, 26, had been charged with capital murder and rape over the October 2023 death of Zoey Felix.

State law requires Cherry to be sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole for at least 25 years, but the district attorney is asking for — and the judge has the authority — to make it 50 years without parole. It wasn't clear with a capital murder conviction how soon the sentence of lethal injection would have been carried out because Kansas hasn’t executed anyone since 1965.

Zoey Felix was raped and then suffocated, District Attorney Mike Kagay told the judge. Kagay said that after lying to authorities and making conflicting claims about another man committing the crime, Cherry acknowledged suffocating her with a pillow in the tent at the homeless encampment. Kagay said Cherry was alone with her for almost five hours while her father was at work at a gas station across the street from the makeshift camp.

Kagay said there was evidence that Cherry had a potential intellectual disability, noting that past state and federal court decisions have barred the execution of intellectually disabled defendants.

In court, Cherry told District Judge Jessica Heinen: “I’m mentally slow. I have trouble learning.”

The sentencing will be June 2-4. Cherry’s attorney, Peter Conley, did not want the date to be sooner, telling Heinen that he and other defense attorneys need time to investigate Cherry’s interactions with the Texas foster care system as a minor.

Felix’s death had child welfare advocates asking why the state didn’t remove the girl from a dangerous environment. Kansas' child welfare department reported that it investigated the family five times in the last 13 months of Felix’s life but couldn’t confirm allegations of neglect or drug use by her mother, including after she was arrested for driving drunk with the girl in the car. The agency also said the family repeatedly declined help.

The girl’s father was present for the entire 30-minute hearing but declined comment afterward.

Amie Slusser, a friend of Felix’s father, who described herself as a mentor to the girl, left the courtroom in tears when Kagay discussed medical evidence that the girl was raped. She said afterward that whatever sentence Cherry faced, she didn’t feel justice would be done.

“A little girl’s life has been taken,” she told reporters. “Whatever he gets, it won’t bring her back”

Court and police records show that Topeka police were called to the mother's home dozens of times. Neighbors said they saw the girl wandering the street outside dirty and hungry, and both parents alleged abuse. Felix’s mother was jailed at the end of 2022 over the drunken driving, which involved a crash with the girl in the front seat.

A neighbor said the mother threw Felix and her father out of the house two weeks before the girl died. They lived among the trees on a vacant lot about three-quarters of a mile to the south.

Cherry was involved with Felix's family before he was living with them in the makeshift homeless encampment. But ahead of Friday's court hearing, authorities had not said why he was involved with Felix's family, when he'd met the girl and her parents and how much contact he'd had with them.

Topeka police reports listed him as living at the home of Felix's mother less than a month before the child's death, when the girl and her father also were living there.

Cherry also showed up in police records because of a fight weeks before Felix's death in the parking lot of a Taco Bell restaurant. He was described as the victim; police reported that he was taken to a local hospital, but there were no other details.

Police records show that before Cherry came to Topeka, he'd been living in Amarillo, Texas, 400 miles (605 kilometers) southwest of Topeka, at least as of October 2021. Documents show that his life in Texas was marked by periods of homelessness and that he had a mental illness in the past.

In May 2018, Cherry, then 20, was in Nacogdoches, Texas, about 500 miles (805 kilometers) southeast of Amarillo. A police report said Cherry walked into the police department’s headquarters and reported being homeless and “on medication daily for mental problems.”

“Cherry advised he has voices going off in his head right now and is seeking help to go to the hospital,” according to the report.

The report did not say what happened after he made his request to go to a hospital.

By August 2019, Cherry was back in Amarillo, municipal court records show. He was jailed briefly for being unable to pay $870 in fines for mistreating and improperly tethering an animal. He spent 30 days in jail after a June 2021 arrest for misdemeanor trespassing.

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Hollingsworth reported from Mission, Kansas.