Methed Up Teacher Cooks Her Disabled Daughter For 6 Hours 

Christina Anne Pangalangan was born on March 28th, 2006 in South Carolina to parents Walter and Rita. The youngest of three siblings, Christina grew up alongside sisters Ashley and Elizabeth, who were adults at the time of our story. At birth, Christina was diagnosed with cerebral palsy, a condition that affected her brain and motor skills.

 In time, she would also be diagnosed with epilepsy and scoliosis and took medication to manage her symptoms. Christina was nonverbal and used a wheelchair. This also meant she needed to be looked after at all times. She was described as a wonderful soul, purely loving and innocent. Despite the many challenges she faced, Christina had a personality that was uniquely her own.

She was stubborn, especially when it came to her sisters or when she wanted something a specific way. Christina also really enjoyed swimming, though even more than that, she loved to sit back and watch her cartoons. She loved cartoons. Dora the Explorer and Spongebob Squarepants were her absolute favorites.

 She would watch them every single day over and over again. Christina was a student at Colton Middle School where she loved being around her classmates. The classroom brought her joy, not just because of the learning, but because she enjoyed the attention she received from those around her. She was someone who appreciated connection and found happiness in being seen and included.

 Christina’s condition shaped parts of her life, but they did not take away her capacity to experience joy, closeness, or love. She always had a happy expression on her face. She did not shy away from showing how she was feeling through her facial expressions, being it angry, sad, or happy. Christina’s mother, Rita, who was her caretaker, was working as a teacher at Colin County Middle School.

 She had a long career, more than 25 years in education and was well experienced and popular. In 2014, she was named teacher of the year. Now, beyond the classroom, Rita was part of community organizations that supported children with disabilities. But her role as a mother and as Christina’s full-time caretaker would soon come under scrutiny.

 In 2016, the South Carolina Department of Social Services filed the first complaint against Rita. The report stated that she had failed to provide adequate care, supervision, and medical attention to her daughter. Christina’s basic needs and her safety were being questioned. The complaints continued over time. By 2018, Rita had also begun seeing Larry Eugene King Jr. of Walterboro.

 The relationship would develop while Christina remained in Rita’s care. Then in 2019 came the fifth complaint. This time it involved visible injury. Rita brought Christina to school. Her face, neck, and chest were all covered in burns. According to the complaint, they were emitting an odor indicating that there was an infection.

 There were no bandages on her wounds which were draining. Christina entered school. Everyone became concerned. what was happening inside her home. Seeing the cause for alarm, the Colton County School District was quick to alert DSS, who reached out to Rita immediately. Questioned, Rita began to explain that Christina accidentally spilled hot water on herself while sleeping.

 Rita was asked to seek treatment for her child’s wounds. However, there were no medical records confirming treatment. The next day, Christina would return to school again with the same wounds and no medical care, and she would remain in Rita’s care after this ordeal. The school raised concerns more than once with the South Carolina Department of Social Services, but nobody responded.

There were no answers, no follow-up, and no meaningful intervention. At one point, Rita expressed frustration with the school’s persistence. She didn’t know why they were after her. She told social workers that she was tired of the reports that the school kept contacting them again and again, and if it didn’t stop, that she would just pull Christina out entirely.

 She was willing to stop sending her disabled daughter to school just to silence the concerns against her. She didn’t want anyone questioning her parenting abilities. Over time, others began to take note of Rita’s behavior towards Christina. Rita had a former roommate, someone she often relied on, often on short notice to help care for Christina.

 Sometimes it was last minute, sometimes without asking. The roommate said she was forced into doing this. On one particular occasion, the roommate tried to refuse because she had to go to work, but Rita kept insisting. According to the roommate, she told me to leave Christina in my car with the windows down because she does it all the time.

 That moment stayed with her. It sounded casual, but it wasn’t. Not for a child who needed full-time caretaking. Then came August of 2019. Christina had been enrolled to start eighth grade that year. A Friday afternoon, August 2nd, Rita needed someone to watch Christina again. She reached out to an 18-year-old named Lindsay Lewis.

 It was a lastminute request like so many others, but this time she apparently had a reason. Rita had once been Lindsay’s child development teacher at school. She knew Lindsay wanted to be a nurse one day, and she used that to her advantage. This would help you, Rita had told her. It’ll look good for your future. The idea hadn’t even started with Lindsay.

 It came from Rita through Lindsay’s mother. Rita framed it as a learning opportunity. And Lindsay said yes. She went to Rita’s house where she met Christina for the first time. She saw was that Christina didn’t speak. She didn’t walk. Instead, she slowly crawled on her hands and knees. Her body was low to the ground.

 She couldn’t fully grasp objects and she couldn’t feed herself. Lindsay had never done anything like this before. She was handed instructions where explained how Christina needed help with everything, bathing, feeding, changing. She explained Christina’s entire routine so Lindsay could learn it. She told Lindsay to give Christina nutritional drinks at meal times.

 Then Rita asked if she could leave just for a few hours as she had a date planned with her boyfriend named Larry. Lindsay agreed to this. She was young and eager to help. She wanted to be trusted and so she stayed. And then she was alone. That evening, Rita texted her, a simple check-in to ask how Christina was doing. Then she added almost casually that she would be back the following day. So Lindsay waited.

Saturday came and no one showed up. There was no calls, no updates, no texts, no change of plan whatsoever. Christina’s mother, her only caretaker, was gone. She was left with an 18-year-old she barely knew. What Lindsay did not know, she could not have predicted, is that the house she was forced to stay back in would be a whole mess.

 There were no groceries in the house. There was no plan. There was no list of emergency contacts. Just a teenager, a severely disabled teenager and a house that felt heavier by the hour. Lindsay searched the kitchen and found nothing but Christina’s nutritional drinks. Refrigerator was mostly bare. Became clear that there had been no preparation for an overnight stay.

 Then Lindsay noticed something else. Bed bugs. The house was completely infested. Lindsay was stunned. This was a teacher’s home. The home of a mother with a child who needed constant medical attention. Rita never returned that night either. All throughout Saturday, there was no sign of her. There wasn’t even a text message.

 Finally, on Sunday, more than 48 hours since Lindsay had arrived, Rita sent her first message. said Larry had food poisoning, that he was supposed to drive her back to the house, but she didn’t know how to drive his truck, so she waited. Later that afternoon, Rita finally came back. Lindsay didn’t see who dropped her off, but she heard it.

 There was music playing outside. A vehicle pulled up. Someone was waiting inside. Lindsay believed it was Larry. She heard the baseline echoing from the vehicle as Rita entered. Rita would then take Christina to Larry’s home, a property off of Low Country Highway. At around 11:00 a.m., they placed Christina in the backseat of Rita’s 2012 Volkswagen Jetta.

 The car was turned off and Christina was left there. The car was parked in the front yard, an unshaded, open space. No trees, no cover, no breeze. They were just a few feet away from her, but their attention was somewhere else. Inside the house, Rita and Larry were in the middle of a multi-day crystal binge.

 An hour passed. They checked on her once, and went back inside. Throughout the afternoon, they argued, sat on the porch swing, walked in and out of the doorway. At one point, they disappeared inside together to hook up. Christina was still outside. The windows were rolled up. The engine was off. There was no air conditioning.

 She was in a soiled diaper and she couldn’t move. She couldn’t unbuckle herself, couldn’t open the door, and she couldn’t call for help. By the time Rita and Larry realized they had locked themselves out of the vehicle, nearly 4 hours had passed. They tried to pry open the door, but they failed. Then they got into Larry’s pickup truck and drove to Rita’s house to retrieve the spare key fob.

 Another hour went by. By the time they returned, Christina had been locked inside the car for 5 hours and 42 minutes. The outside heat had risen, and inside the vehicle, it was far worse. There was no ventilation, no circulation, nothing to ease the rising temperatures. Inside the car, it reached 135°. Her skin was blistered, her diaper was soaked. She was gone.

 When first responders arrived at the scene, Christina had been already removed from the car, but she wasn’t breathing. She was nonresponsive. Her skin showed signs of extreme heat exposure. Her body was limp and completely still. They tried, but it was clear she was beyond help. There would be no resuscitation, no emergency reversal, no saving her.

 At the scene, Rita told first responders it had only been a few minutes. She said she had left her daughter in the vehicle while she stepped inside her boyfriend’s home to grab a pack of cigarettes. She said she returned to find the car locked with Christina in the keys trapped inside.

 That was her account, but it wouldn’t hold because Larry’s home was equipped with a security system with timestamp footage. When investigators reviewed the tapes, the timeline unfolded clearly. What they saw instead was 6 hours, a series of choices, time that had passed, opportunities to check on her missed over and over again. The footage showed Rita and Larry outside the house, walking, talking, and laughing, embracing in the doorway, sitting on the porch swing, then disappearing inside.

 It showed a life continuing just steps away from a child who is dying in the heat. The couple were taken into custody in connection to Christina’s death. In a bizarre turn of events, Rita’s daughter, Ashley, was arrested and charged with unlawful conduct of a minor for leaving her seven-year-old and her 9-month-old in a hot car on a 91° day.

 This occurred less than 2 weeks after Christina was killed in the same manner. At trial, the forensic pathologist who conducted Christina’s autopsy testified. The cause of death, hyperothermia, an extreme and prolonged exposure to heat. Vomit was found in Christina’s lungs. She had inhaled stomach fluids, a sign that her body had begun to shut down.

 Her systems completely collapsed. And in her final moments, she was left unable to even clear her own airway. Christina had died in the backseat of her mother’s car with no help, no voice, and no way to get out. In 2021, a lawsuit was filed against the South Carolina Department of Social Services. The accusation was clear.

 The department, very agency meant to protect vulnerable children, had been warned more than once. The lawsuit alleged that the South Carolina Department of Social Services had been notified numerous times with the care Christina was receiving, that there were several red flags, and that these were documented, that somebody knew about this.

 According to the complaint, the department was contacted on at least five separate occasions, each time with concerns about how Rita was caring for her daughter, but nothing was done about it. Lawsuit stated that despite repeated warnings, the department failed to intervene in a meaningful way, that Christina remained in an environment where basic medical care was not guaranteed, where she could be burned, sick, or left alone with nobody stepping in to care for her.

These were not abstract claims. They came with names, dates, and documentation. And still, no protective action happened that might have saved her life. By the time Christina died in August of 2019, those five calls were no longer just paperwork. They were evidence of failure. Lawsuits sought accountability, not just for one tragedy, but for the repeated moments where intervention was possible, and they chose not to intervene.

 In August of 2022, another lawsuit was filed. This time it was a wrongful death and survival action brought on behalf of Christina’s estate. The defendants were named clearly Rita Frasier Pangalangan and Larry Eugene King Jr. By now there were two battles unfolding. One in civil court, the other in criminal trial.

 The state prosecution was led by Solicitor Duffy Stone and Deputy Solicitor Shawn Thornton. The opening days of the trial, they laid out their case. They told the jury that Christina wasn’t just left behind by accident. Investigators took the stand and testified that both Rita and Larry had tested positive for Crystal on the day of the incident.

 They had been under the influence the entire time. The defense tried to argue otherwise. They said it had been a tragic mistake, not criminal, just a failure of judgment. Larry took the stand himself. He testified the car had been running when he placed Christina in the back seat and that he never meant to harm her.

 Rita, however, did not testify. What was your relationship with this child? Uh, she was just my girlfriend’s daughter, you know. Did you This This is a child who had special needs and needed special care. Did you wash this child? Did you bathe this child? Somebody did. Did you? No, sir. And I did. This stuff, but this child was in a diaper.

 This young girl wore a diaper and wasn’t able to clean yourself. Did you clean this child? Did you change your diaper? Were you responsible for things like that? No, sir. Did you feed this child? No, sir. Did you put her to bed or get her up in the morning? No, sir. Were you financially responsible? Did you pay any child support or anything for this child? No, sir.

 Regardless, the uh the night before they spent that night at your home. Is that right? Yes, sir. And tell me how the morning in the morning you got up and you and Miss or I’m sorry, did you go to bed that night? No, sir. I’ve been up all night. Was that partly due to thatamine use? Yes, sir. Okay. And when you got up in the morning, did you and Miss you and the other defendant have a conversation which led to what we saw on the porch, that is you carrying the child out? Yes, sir. Okay.

Yes, sir. Tell the ladies and gentlemen what that you I don’t want you quoting it but just tell them what the conversation was about. Just about her being involved with somebody else and um we had talked about it and some things broke my heart and I just uh asked her to leave. All right. So it was about basically what you would call infidelity. Is that right? Yes sir.

 You asked her to leave? Yes sir. Did she agree to leave? Yes sir. Okay. And then what happened next? I put a child in the car. All right. We say you put the child in the car. Do you did you carry her out? Yes, sir. I did. Okay. And why were you the one to carry her out? Rita has a extra kidney.

 has a lot of trouble, health trouble, and her daughter was getting heavy for it and so she asked me to carry it. Would there have been anything inappropriate, wrong or rough about the way you would have treated that little disabled girl? Man, absolutely not. Never. Can you imagine a circumstance where that would be your reaction? No, sir.

 And where did you put her in the car if you recall? And the behind the driver’s seat on the driver’s side in the rear. Okay. And you you stepped away then. Did mom come and like get her settled her seat belt or something like that? I think so. Yes, sir. Was the car running when you put the little girl in? Absolutely. Would you have left that little girl in that car if that engine was weren’t running and the AC wasn’t on? Never.

 Never. Even with your feelings hurt, sir? Never. Up until the time y’all discovered that little girl’s body. Was there anything unusual or scary about this day? No, sir. It was another normal day. I thought everything was I had no idea that anything was not normal. Were you trying to memorize the events moment by moment? No, she followed me back inside.

What were we all talking about at that? You’d ask her to leave. She didn’t leave. What were we all What was going on between you? Um, she was just trying to plead with me and talk to me and um, just trying to make things right. Okay. And while y’all’s in the house, we just put the cards on the table.

 Did you make up? We did. Okay. And you decided to move on. Yes, sir. And what happened when you tried to leave? She came back in and told me her keys were locked in her car. Said the keys were locked in the car. Yes, sir. And what was your reaction to that? Not my problem. Cheated on me. Get out of here. No. I I tried to help her get in the car.

 I didn’t know I didn’t know that anything other than that was wrong, to be honest. Okay. Was the car still running? car was running. Were you worried about the situation? No, sir. Not not really. Okay. And uh if you had known, and I know you’ve seen what we’ve all seen, if you’d had any inkling that that’s what was going to happen or was happening, what was your reaction? Man, I would have knocked that window out of that car and got that child. I had no idea.

 Oh, so you made an effort to get the child out of the car. Is that right? Yes, sir. Or to get the car open. Were you successful in that? Um, not right away. I wasn’t. Okay. And how you tried is not important, but do you recall what you did to try to get into the car? Some of it? Yes, sir. What did you do? Um, I tried to, uh, get in.

I think I tried to pry the door. Um, uh, I tried to I offered to knock out the sunroof, but Rita didn’t want me to do that. Um, you say you offered to knock out the sunroof? Yes, I did. Knock your car? Not my car. Okay. But, but you offered to knock out the sunroof, and she said no. Yes, sir.

 Did y’all then come up with a uh a different plan? Yes, sir. And what was that? She said she had a spare key at her home. Okay. And were you at this point just done with the operation or do you continue to try to help? I continued to try to help. And what did you do to try to help? Um I went and took her to get another spare key. Okay.

 And when you left, was the engine running? Yes, sir. And was it running when you got back? Yes, sir. And did you think that AC was on? Yes, sir. And when y’all got back, were you able to pop the uh just pull up with the key and that solve the problem? Did you pull up, hit the fob, and unlock the door? No, sir.

 Why not? I think the batteries were weak in it. It wouldn’t It wasn’t working. Okay. It wouldn’t unlock the door. So, y’all hit it. Hit it. Hit it. Unlock. Unlock. It wouldn’t unlock it. Yes, sir. You had a real problem now. So, or at least she had a real problem. Is that fair? Yes, sir. What did you do to address that? Um, I called Robert from Stokes Lock and Key.

 Do you know someone there? Uh, yes, sir. Robert, the owner. Okay. So, you called the owner of Stokes Lock and Key. And what was the purpose of that call? So, he could help me get in the vehicle. And if in fact you made that call, would that be reflected on the video tape? I mean, would you were you in the argument you made? Absolutely. Yes, sir. Okay.

 So, you called Stokes Lock and Key and you spoke with a person you knew there and asked how to get in the car. Is that your testimony? Yes, sir. And what did he tell you? Told me it was a emergency key and the key fob. Okay. And you emergency key and the key fob. People may know what that means, but apparently you didn’t at the time.

 So, what does that mean? Um, it was a key inside the fob that you separated and pull out a key. Told me to pop off. Told me to retrieve the key. I got the key and told me to pop off the face off the door handle socket. Unlock the car. And were you eventually able to unlock the car? Yes, I did.

 And it wasn’t with that key fob. No, sir. It’s just oldfashioned stick it in and turn. Yes, sir. Yes, sir. When the child got out or the child was was taken from the car and you knew she was deceased, what was your immediate reaction? Call 911. Did it occur to you that maybe you were in trouble? No, sir. Anytime up until I mean any time during the course of this investigation, speaking with police officers, speaking with anybody else who talked to you about it, were you like, “Oh my goodness, I need to cover something up.” Never had idea, man.

Excuse me. No sir. No sir. Okay. So you called 911 and the information you gave them was it correct? Yes sir. And when law enforcement arrived, did you talk to them? Yes sir. And was the information that you gave them correct? Yes sir. The vehicle itself are the windows tinted in that car? Yes sir.

 Are they a dark t just like a comes from the factory? Very dark. Can you see in that car? No sir. When law enforcement got there later they took you down to the uh police station. Is that correct? Yes sir. Did anybody ever tell you you don’t have to talk to us? You got a right to remain silent. All that sort of thing. Yes sir.

And did you sign the form and say I understand it? Absolutely. And then did they keep talking to you for several hours? Yes, sir. Did you talk until they said you don’t need to talk anymore? Yes, sir. Did you ever lie? Try to cover up yourself? Never. You carried that child to the car and put her in the car.

You accused of causing great bodily injury to this child. Do you feel like you handled her correctly and appropriately? Yes, sir. I did. I asked you earlier, is there any way she cause harm to any child? Never. I love children. Did you and Rita and get together and plan some way to kill this child? Absolutely not.

 Did y’all get together and plan some way to hurt this child? No, sir. Can you imagine a circumstance that could have occurred? No, sir. Jury deliberated for just over 2 hours. During that time, they submitted two questions, each one asking for clarification on the specific charges against the couple. Inside the courtroom, emotions ran high when one of Christina’s older adult sisters, Elizabeth, gave testimony on behalf of their mother.

 Through tears, she tried to explain who Rita was. She said, “My mom, she loved Christina so much and she’s a good mom.” She would often say that God created her to be Christina’s mom because she was tough and she could handle it. She described Rita as devoted, as someone who worked multiple jobs to make ends meet so she could care for Christina.

 When insurance refused to cover a walker for Christina because they claimed it was cosmetic, Rita found a way. She took on tutoring gigs. She cleaned houses. She did everything to ensure Rita’s needs were met. The courtroom listened in silence. Rita sat just a few feet away, holding a tissue to her face. She cried quietly as her daughter spoke on her behalf.

 Elizabeth continued, “She loved her. Christina was her whole world, and she has not been the same. Every single day we’ve lived with missing Christina.” In the closing arguments, Celistra Stone stood before the jury with one focus, the timeline. He walked them through every hour, every moment, every appearance the couple had made outside that car, every chance they had to intervene, every time they didn’t.

 He was asking the jury to imagine. He was asking them to remember, to remember the footage, and to remember the burns, to remember the child who had been left to die in a seat of a car for over 5 hours. Then he turned to the law. Solister Stone told the jury that murder required malice and that malice doesn’t always look like rage.

 It doesn’t always come with a weapon. Sometimes it looks like nothing at all. It can be actions. The way someone acts enough to show disregard for another person’s life, he asks. So the question you have here is what did they do to show disregard for human life? His answer was everything. He reminded the jury that Christina was completely dependent on others.

 She was non-verbal, immobile, and unable to free herself. He described how her vulnerability made the couple’s actions even more devastating. He acknowledged what the defense had said earlier, that everyone in South Carolina knows what happens when you leave a child in a hot car. He told the jury, “That is disregard for human life.

” Solicitor Stone pointed to not just what the couple had done, but what they had never done. In the evidence collected, at no point did they show that they cared for Christina. Then he brought the jury back to Christina. They were shown crime scene photos, her body, after 5 hours in the heat, her wounds, her burns.

 He called it torture. He let that word hang. He told them, “But in this courtroom today, I asked you to use the word murder.” The defense closed with a different argument. Larry’s attorney, Gil Gat, told the jury he had no legal responsibility to Christina. They claimed the car had been left running, that this was not an intentional killing, just a terrible situation that spiral beyond control.

 The final moments of the trial, Rita’s defense attorney, Dne Phillips, made one last attempt to reach the jury. He called Rita to stand beside him, just feet away from the jurors. She rose from her seat and walked forward. He asked the jury to look at her. Really look at her. She stood there shoulder shaking. Her hands trembled.

 She sobbed openly in front of the room. Her face was blotched red, wet with tears. He said, “This is this woman’s life. This is this woman’s freedom. And I’m not saying she did everything right because God knows she didn’t.” He then paused and then continued gesturing to the world beyond the courtroom. And you can be angry at Rita out here, but you can’t do it in there. Rita returned to her seat.

 She reached for more tissues, something that she had done often during trial. Silently, she cried into her hands. In September of 2023, after deliberating for just over two hours, the jury returned with their decision. We, the jury, in the above caption on the charge of murder of Christina an find the defendant guilty. Oh my god.

Oh my god. We the jury in the above caption case on the charge of great bodily injury of a child we find the defendant guilty. Oh, we the jury in the above captain case on the charge of criminal conspiracy find the defendant not guilty. Rita Pangalangan and Larry Eugene King Jr.

 were both found guilty of murder and inflicting great bodily injury on a child. Rita received 37 years in prison. Larry was sentenced to 32. Each was also handed a concurrent 20-year sentence for CA. By October of 2024, after years of hearings, filings, and legal delays, a financial settlement was finally reached. It was tied to both the wrongful death and civil lawsuits.

 one filed against Christina’s mother and her boyfriend, the other against the state’s Department of Social Services. The total amount was $314,05.82 US. Of that figure, $195,000 were expected to come from the South Carolina Department of Social Services, the same department that according to the lawsuit had failed to protect Christina despite being contacted multiple times.

 The allegations claimed the Department of Social Services had violated its own statutes, laws created to safeguard children from neglect and harm. Christina had been reported as at risk. She had been burned and she had been overlooked. The system did nothing to help her. The remainder of the settlement was tied to her estate, an acknowledgement, at least on paper, of the life that was taken.

Christina’s funeral took place on the afternoon of Wednesday, August 14th, 2019, just days before she was meant to start 8th grade. The service was held at Faith Church on Hampton Street in Walterboro. In her obituary, she was remembered simply, a purely loving and wonderful soul. That was the Christina the world was asked to remember.

Christina Anne Pangalangan never spoke a word in her life, but her story has since sparked conversations far beyond her small South Carolina town in courtrooms, newsrooms, and eventually the South Carolina legislature. Her story didn’t end with a verdict or a dollar amount. Christina’s death revealed a legal loophole in South Carolina’s criminal code.

 Under state law, the charge of homicide by CA could only be applied if the child was under the age of 11. Christina was 13. As a result, prosecutors were forced to pursue more complex murder charges, charges that revolved proving intent rather than recklessness. Though her mother and her boyfriend were eventually convicted of murder and sentenced to decades in prison, Solicitor Stone warned that not every case would be so clear-cut.

Christina’s trial became the catalyst for a proposed change in state law, one that would expand protections by raising the age limit for CA homicide charges from 11 to 18. Her life, though short and marked by hardship, became the reason the law may soon change. A bill now bears her shadow. Christina was silent. Her movements were limited.

 But in death, she created a legacy no courtroom could ignore. And that legacy may go on to protect children whose stories have yet to be written. It lives on through legal reform and through the calls to close the gaps that let her fall through. And it lives on in a memory of a girl who loved cartoons, who needed care, and who was failed again and again until the world was finally forced to listen.

 Christina will never grow older, but the law might. The proposed change would allow homicide by CA to apply in all cases involving minors so that no child, regardless of age, is left outside the law and no one like Christina ever falls between the cracks again.