WARNING: This story contains details of child abuse.
A former Ottawa woman convicted of manslaughter in the death of her five-year-old daughter at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic has been sentenced to 10 years in prison, minus some time already spent in custody — marking the end of a chapter in the strange, brief and tragic saga of Chloe Guan-Branch’s life.
In the spring of 2020, Chloe desperately needed medical care to save her life. Her bladder had somehow ruptured in her Ottawa apartment on May 9, and her body’s waste was slowly leaking into her bloodstream, poisoning her.
For six days, her mother Ada Guan and Guan’s boyfriend Justin Cassie-Berube did not get Chloe the help she needed. They searched online about her increasingly dire symptoms and Guan consulted a pharmacist, but they never took the girl to a doctor — even as she lost the ability to walk, became incontinent, vomited repeatedly and was groaning in pain.
Court heard they were worried that taking Chloe to hospital would alert officials to the physical abuse she’d been enduring at the hands of Cassie-Berube, including a strike to Chloe’s mouth on her fifth birthday, May 10, that split the skin under her lip.
The girl whose birth on a plane had made international headlines five years earlier died alone in her room on May 15, 2020, in her soiled bed, as Guan watched TV in the living room and Cassie-Berube was out.
Wednesday’s sentence by Superior Court Justice Anne London-Weinstein comes 17 months after Guan, 33, pleaded guilty to manslaughter.
After the plea she remained out on bail, and in September she was arrested in Calgary and jailed in Ottawa after repeatedly neglecting to show up in court ahead of sentencing.
Guan pleaded guilty to failing to attend court, in addition to the manslaughter. The Crown and defence jointly proposed that she should receive an additional month in prison for the failure to attend, but they were far apart on their recommendations for the manslaughter charge.
Assistant Crown attorney Khorshid Rad called for an 11-year sentence, while defence lawyer Diane Magas asked for three to four years, saying Guan had been the victim of emotional abuse and controlling behaviour in previous relationships, including with Cassie-Berube.
Rad acknowledged the relationship dynamic should be taken into consideration, but argued it has to be weighed against the number of days Chloe was left to suffer. Guan’s failure to act became an increasingly aggravating circumstance “every day Chloe gets weaker,” Rad said, adding that Guan’s moral blameworthiness is “very high.”
In 2024, a different judge found Cassie-Berube guilty of manslaughter, criminal negligence causing death, failing to provide the necessaries of life, assault causing bodily harm and assault, all involving Chloe.
He was handed a 14-year prison sentence for what the judge called a “shocking example of abuse.”
Not long after the Crown’s successful prosecution on all the charges Cassie-Berube faced, Guan and her lawyer Diane Magas struck a plea deal. Guan was facing many of the same charges, and in exchange for a guilty plea to manslaughter the other charges have been dropped.
During sentencing submissions in Guan’s case last month the Crown read a long, impassioned victim impact statement from Guan and Cassie-Berube’s next door neighbour. Crystal James interacted with Chloe in their apartment building’s hallway, giving her small gifts and treats. She sometimes noticed bruises and swelling, as well as her quiet, timid manner.
“I imagine [Chloe] laying in pain in that apartment, maybe wondering why her neighbour didn’t come save her … her imagined whisper plays in a loop in my mind,” James wrote. She switched apartments but it wasn’t far enough, and she ended up moving from Ottawa entirely.
“I cannot believe that anyone who has touched this case has walked away unmarred. Irrevocably I am changed,” she wrote. But she’s also grateful she got to know Chloe, however briefly.
Guan read a statement in court, saying she “deeply regretted everything that I didn’t do.”
“I should have known better when I first saw the signs. For this, I do not deserve to be her mom — not in the past, present or future…. If I had another chance to tell you how sorry I am and show you how much I love you and be able to hug you again, I would do anything for that chance.”
Guan has 30 days to decide whether to appeal the sentence.
