Man given 17 years in prison for killing his 2-year-old daughter
Apr. 3—AUSTIN, Minn. — A man serving a life sentence for murder in Wisconsin was sentenced to more than 17 years in prison for the murder of his 2-year-old daughter on Wednesday.
Dariaz Higgins, 40, pleaded guilty in Mower County District Court on Wednesday, April 3, to second-degree murder for killing his daughter, Noelani Robinson, in March 2019 and leaving her body in a ditch in Steele County while traveling from Austin to Minneapolis. Higgins was given a 210-month prison sentence in the Wednesday plea hearing.
Higgins is also serving a life sentence at the Waupun Correctional Institute in Wisconsin for the shooting death of his daughter's mother on March 11, 2019. Higgins was arrested on March 13, 2019, for the shooting. On March 15, 2019, an off-duty Steele County Department of Public Works employee found the body of a child wrapped in a blanket in the east ditch north of the intersection of U.S. Highway 218 and Minnesota Highway 30 in Steele County.
According to the criminal complaint:
Higgins told police the girl died after falling off the toilet at the hotel they were staying at in Austin. Higgins said that he wrapped her body in a blanket and a few days later, in the early morning of March 10, 2019, put the girl's blanket-wrapped body in a ditch because he knew she "was dead and that she had been dead for a couple of days and that he could not travel with her."
An autopsy found that the girl died from non-accidental blunt force trauma and that there were other multiple blunt force injuries to her body and that her death did not match Higgins' version of events.
