SALT LAKE CITY (AP) - A Burmese refugee convicted of killing a 7-year-old girl from his South Salt Lake neighborhood is scheduled to be sentenced Wednesday.
The 27-year-old Esar Met faces 20 years to life in prison after a jury found him guilty of child kidnapping and aggravated murder earlier this year.
Authorities said DNA evidence proved Met kidnapped, raped and killed Hser Ner Moo in 2008. He left her tiny body inside an apartment he shared with four other Burmese men.
Met had been in the U.S. just a month.
His defense attorney, Michael Peterson, said the death was the result of innocent play with the girl in his basement the day she died.
Prosecutor Robert Parrish called it a sexual assault that escalated into a killing when the girl tried to run away.
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