Mom who killed daughter gets life sentence after guilty plea

SEMINOLE COUNTY, Fla. (WOFL FOX 35) - An Oviedo mother who killed her daughter has been sentenced to life in prison.  Sujatha Guduru, 46,  shot her daughter two years ago, and then tried to kill herself, investigators said.  

Guduru initially pled insanity after fatally shooting her only child, Chetana in late January of 2014.   According to investigators, Guduru shot her daughter twice in the face, waited 30 minutes to make sure was dead, then shot herself in the abdomen.  Guduru allegedly told police she killed her daughter, because there would be no one to take care of the teen, once she committed suicide.

Brian Bieber, a lawyer for Guduru, said she has been battling severe mental illness for years and is looking for a way to punish herself for what she did.  Last year, Guduru abandoned her insanity defense and asked for the death penalty, but that was never pursued by prosecutors.  Earlier this year, she rejected a second-degree murder plea deal that would have sent her to prison for 30 years.  On Friday, she agreed to a guilty plea of first-degree murder.

"There is no way that she should have been permitted to purchase that firearm," Bieber said.  "This is a sad and tragic day. Really the final chapter in this story for the family."

Guduru has requested that she be sent to a faith-based prison Hernando County, but Circuit Judge Kenneth Lester Jr. did not promise to send her there.