'Sorry' mother jailed for 25 years for allowing her daughter to STARVE to death while she played an online video game

Brandi Wulf, 3, so hungry she ate cat litter and weighed just 23lbs

Rebecca Colleen Christie neglected child to play 'World of Warcraft'

Brandi's divorced father, Derek Wulf, faces lesser charges

Wulf is a soldier and the family lived at Holloman Air Base in New Mexico



A mother has been jailed for 25 years for allowing her daughter to starve to death while she played an online video game.

Rebecca Colleen Christie sat at her computer for hours at a time playing the fantasy role playing game 'World of Warcraft' as her three year old daughter Brandi slowly starved to death.

The toddler was so hungry that she ate cat litter and weighed just 23lbs when she was rushed to hospital clinging to life.

Sentenced: Rebecca Colleen Christie, 28, got 25 in prison years for allowing her three year old daughter, Brandi Wulf, to starve to death... while she frittered away her time playing an online video game

Doctors who examined the badly malnourished girl said her ribs were protruding from her body and found she had gained just one pound and a half in the last year of her life.

Christie, the wife of an air force sergeant, had called paramedics to their home on the Holloman Air Force base in Las Cruces, New Mexico, when she found her daughter limp and unconscious.

Doctors were unable to save the toddler, who had been allowed to 'wither away' as her mother played the online game with friends.

Her ex-husband Sgt Derek Wulf told a court he would return home from work to find his daughter without any water or food.

FBI agents who investigated the death found that on the day Brandi died a computer in the home showed 'continuous activity' from noon until 3am.

Christie, 28, was convicted of second degree murder and child abandonment in November 2009 three years after her daughter died.

The court had been told her older child was being cared for by her mother as she was neglecting her.

Distraction: The court heard evidence that Christie was so engrossed with playing the online video game 'World of Warcraft' that she neglected her toddler for days on end

Virtual reality: World of Warcraft is the most popular 'massively multi-player online game', in which thousands of people from all over the world meet in cyberspace as virtual characters





Prosecutors said Brandi had died from malnutrion and dehydration.

Wulf told an FBI agent he would regularly come home from work and find his daughter with her water glass empty, because his wife was busy 'playing on the computer', according to court documents.



There appeared to be so little to eat in the home - with its overflowing litter box and pervasive smell of cat urine - that the child would eat cat food, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office.

At her sentencing Christie was full of remorse and sobbed before she was jailed for 25 years by district judge Robert Brack.

'I'll never get to see her grown up ... That weighs on my heart. That was my little girl', Christie said



'Not seeing what she needed, I'll live with that for eternity. There's nothing more that I want than to have her back with me, but I can't have her back, and even now, I can't talk to my older daughter.



'It was my responsibility to take care of her and I failed her and I'm sorry'.

Her ex-husband, who pleaded guilty to child neglect, will be sentenced June 15.



He faces up to three years in prison and one year of supervised release.

