SACRAMENTO—A Sacramento mother has been ordered to stand trial this November for allegedly setting her seven-year-old daughter on fire in April.
On Wednesday, August 26, Sacramento Superior Court Judge Michael Sweet scheduled a November 19 trial date for Porche Latrice Wright on attempted murder and mayhem allegations, along with special findings of causing great bodily injury and permanent disfigurement and disability.
Sacramento police described finding a little girl burned from her face all the way down to her feet at a duplex on the 600 block of El Camino Avenue on Saturday, April 4. The attack had occurred the night before.
At the hearing, officers provided the details of the girl’s description and what led to her injuries. This included being doused with “hot oil,” locked in the bathroom and set on fire with a lighter.
Wright’s daughter suffered second and third-degree burns that covered nearly 40 percent of her body, including her neck, chest, arms and legs. The injuries were described by one detective as “severe and very significant,” requiring surgeries well into adulthood.
The testimony came from officers who responded to a call from Wright’s boyfriend on April 4. The boyfriend had not been home at the time of the incident. He said that Wright did not want him to call the police but to go buy burn cream. Instead, Wright’s boyfriend left the duplex, called 911, then walked to a nearby fire station to tell firefighters what had happened.
When police arrived, they said Wright was upset and crying when she answered the door. She pointed down the hallway to where her injured child was. “I saw a little girl standing in the hallway,” recounted Sacramento police officer Krista Koppinger. The child said, ‘Yes, she had set me on fire, but it was an accident.’” Koppinger said there was a strong smell of gasoline in the apartment that was heavier as she neared the bathroom. Once In the bathroom, she found char marks on the wall around the bathtub,
When the young girl was taken to the emergency room, another Sacramento officer, Phillip Monelo, said the girl told him that Wright became angry “because she wasn’t listening to her,” then went into her bedroom, returning with a red bottle. The girl told the officer that her mother shouted to her, “Go ahead and laugh in my face.” She then told him that her mother doused her head with a liquid she described as “hot oil,” marched her to the bathroom and locked the door.
“She stated her mom locked her in the bathroom, poured more of the hot oil on top of her, then set her on fire with a lighter,” Monelo said.
Wright has a history of abuse charges, court records show, and completed a “batterer’s treatment program” to settle a 2014 felony domestic violence charge in Sacramento County. At the hearing, Sacramento police detective Konrad von Schoech testified that Wright’s boyfriend had told him that she was bipolar, suffered from manic depression and was schizophrenic—conditions amplified by her drug use.
