In the cold sterility of her hospital room, Brook Stagles drew her last breaths cradled in her mother’s arms.

Brook was just 3 years old on Nov. 14, 2016 when she died from injuries related to a beating delivered days before by her father’s live-in girlfriend Erica Bell.

Brook was so battered and bruised, hospital employees asked family members if she’d been in a car accident.

In a victim impact statement before Monroe County Court Judge Christopher Ciaccio on Wednesday, Brook’s maternal grandfather John Geer described his family’s confusion, horror and fear after being summoned to Rochester General Hospital the night before Brook died.

“Nobody should ever hold a dying child in their arms,” Geer said.

Geer said his daughter Ashlee — Brook’s mother — lay beside Brook’s tiny body and spoke soothing words of comfort to her lifeless form for nearly an hour after she had died. The girl’s injuries had been too severe for pediatric surgeons to fix.

“I wouldn’t wish that on anybody,” he said. “So many people have been traumatized by all of this.”

Geer’s comments came just before Ciaccio handed down the maximum sentence to Bell, a 25-year-old heroin addict from Spencerport who was convicted in September of second-degree murder and first-degree manslaughter for Brook's death.

Bell was sentenced to 25 years to life for the second-degree murder conviction and 20 years on the manslaughter charge. The sentences will be served concurrently.

“There are few things that shock a community more than the beating death of a child,” Ciacco said moments before handing down Bell’s sentence.

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He did not yield to pleas from defense attorney Lawrence Kasperek to show his client leniency. Kasperek argued — as he had at trial — that Bell was a “textbook case of a battered woman” and that Brook’s father Michael Stagles shared blame for the girl’s death.

Michael Stagles last month pleaded guilty to criminally negligent homicide and admitted to failing to act to get Brook medical attention in the days before her death. He faces a sentence of up to four years in prison and is scheduled to be sentenced by Ciaccio on Dec. 6.

Kasperek had urged Ciaccio to deliver Bell a sentence not influenced by “a community driven by bloodlust, looking for vengeance.”

Ciaccio said Bell’s heroin use and past abuse were not a shield for her actions.

Testimony at trial alleged that Bell hit Brook because she had come into the room while Bell was shooting heroin.

“Heroin had nothing to do with you hiding Brook’s injuries,” Ciaccio said to Bell. “These were acts of a person fully in control of their faculties.”

Ciaccio said he was especially struck at trial by a picture presented by prosecutors of Brook standing in her maternal great-grandmother’s Greece living room, grinning broadly next to a Christmas tree. The photo was taken just days before Brook was beaten.

“That is an image of hope, the future,” he said. “The hope that this is the one who can break free, of the cycle of addiction, of abuse, of living in a cockroach-infested home.”

And that future will now never be known, he said.

Prosecutor Sara VanStrydonck, head of the Monroe County District Attorney’s Child Abuse Unit, argued passionately for the maximum sentence.

“This tragedy was 100 percent preventable and 100 percent avoidable,” she said. “It is completely unnatural the way (Brook) was taken from this earth.”

She said not only was Brook robbed of her future, but the entire community was robbed of Brook’s potential.

“Yes, she had a lot of adversity and had seen things no child should have to see,” VanStrydonck said. “But we don’t know if she would rise up, if she would become a doctor or a lawyer or an advocate for kids like her. We don’t know because the defendant took her from us.”

Bell’s trial detailed Brook’s days of suffering, as she endured the agony of her internal injuries while numerous bystanders and family members failed to get her the medical attention she desperately needed. The details, VanStrydonck said, were so terrible she chose not to recount them again on Wednesday, saying “hearing them once in this court was enough.”

Following the court proceeding, Geer said Bell’s sentence brings little solace.

“It’s not going to bring Brook back, it’s just...Erica Bell is the poster child for heroin and Brook is the poster child for child abuse,” he said. “Everybody loses.”

Geer said he will continue his efforts working toward reform of child protective services nationally and locally. He has embarked on a nationwide billboard and newspaper advertisement campaign, and in September was running radio and television ads critical of Monroe County's CPS agency in particular.

In the weeks before Brook died, there had been two reports of abuse or neglect lodged by her relatives with CPS.

In October, Monroe County Executive Cheryl Dinolfo announced a sweeping plan to reform agency services here. Changes include redoubled efforts to fill vacant caseworker positions, expand the number of caseworker jobs, increase salaries and reinstate an in-house child abuse hotline that was discontinued in 2015 under then-County Executive Maggie Brooks.

Geer said he is cautiously optimistic Dinolfo’s efforts will be effective.

”You know, we haven’t seen anything of the eight points come into play yet, not one thing of the eight have come true yet,” he said. “But I’ve got faith she’s going to do it, I’m praying she’s going to do the right thing.”

A member of Michael Stagles’ family spoke publicly for the first time on Wednesday.

In an emotional statement outside the court, Stagles’ sister April Stagles, Brook’s paternal aunt — who also lived in the Albemarle Street home where Brook was beaten — said the family fled their home in fear following the intense media attention on the case.

Calling Bell “evil” and “conniving,” she said her family’s loss has been overlooked.

“We will have a lot of ‘never wills’ because of what this girl done to our family,” she said “Our niece was precious to us, we loved her…I just want y’all to know we’re grieving too, we’re hurting too.”

MCDERMOT@Gannett.com

VFREILE@Gannett.com