Erick Delgado had sought greater control over his daughter’s care before Maige Yang killed the 18-month-old after the court ruling.
CHAMPLIN, Minn. — Erick Delgado had been trying to gain custody of his 18-month-old daughter when a Minnesota judge finally granted him temporary custody on Jan. 9. Before he could begin caring for her under that order, De’Ali Blia Delgado was dead.
The child’s mother, Maige Elizabeth Yang, later admitted intentionally putting a significant amount of children’s sleeping medication in De’Ali’s bottle after the hearing. Yang pleaded guilty in June to intentional second-degree murder and has now been sentenced to 380 months in prison, or 31 years and eight months. Reports based on court records said she received 196 days of credit for time already served. The sentence brings the criminal prosecution to its most consequential conclusion while leaving the sequence leading to De’Ali’s death as a central part of the case.
Delgado’s attempt to secure custody had begun well before the fatal afternoon. Minnesota reporting said he petitioned for permanent custody in September and then filed an emergency request for temporary sole custody on Jan. 2. In that filing, he alleged that Yang was showing erratic behavior and expressed concern that she might have untreated mental health issues. The claim reflected Delgado’s concern in the family court case; the available public reporting does not establish it as a medical finding or diagnosis.
A day after the emergency filing, Champlin police issued an endangered-person alert for Yang and De’Ali. Family members had reported that they had not seen them for nearly a week. Police canceled the Jan. 3 alert within hours after mother and daughter were located safe. Rather than immediately granting Delgado’s emergency custody request, the family court scheduled a hearing. That hearing would take place six days later and produce the order Delgado had sought: temporary custody of his daughter.
What followed the Jan. 9 hearing became the basis of Yang’s murder case. Her parents told police that Yang returned to the Champlin home with De’Ali and carried the toddler into an upstairs bedroom. The bedroom door was locked. Yang’s father later tried to enter to check on them and could not. He forced the door open and found his granddaughter on the floor, her lips turning blue, according to the criminal complaint. He picked her up, carried her downstairs and called 911.
Police responding to the home in the 11900 block of Castle Rock Court found De’Ali on the living room floor and not breathing. Officers attempted to revive her before emergency medical personnel took her to a hospital. She was pronounced dead. Elsewhere in the house, officers found Yang partially unconscious in an upstairs bedroom after what the complaint described as an apparent suicide attempt. She also was taken to a hospital and remained under police supervision while being treated.
The account investigators obtained from Yang removed the possibility that the child had simply reached medication accidentally, according to the charging documents. After receiving her rights, Yang admitted putting a large amount of children’s sleep medication into her daughter’s bottle and feeding it to her. She said she had acted “to make the pain go away” and wanted De’Ali to “pass peacefully in her sleep.” Those statements were cited by prosecutors in charging Yang with second-degree murder four days after De’Ali died.
The timing was particularly painful for Delgado. In a public message after his daughter’s death, he said he had obtained custody at about 11:30 a.m. and that she was dead by the afternoon. He wrote that he had fought hard for his child and believed the system had failed her. His statement expressed a grieving parent’s view of what had happened; the available record reviewed for this article does not show an official finding assigning legal responsibility to the family court or police for failing to prevent the killing.
For months, the murder charge remained pending as the legal process moved forward. Yang, who had been 23 when charged and was 24 by the time of sentencing, was held after leaving the hospital. In June, she pleaded guilty to intentional second-degree murder. Minnesota News Network reported at the time that the plea agreement contemplated an aggravated sentence of up to 35 years. By pleading guilty, Yang admitted criminal responsibility and eliminated the need for a jury trial over whether she intentionally caused De’Ali’s death.
The final sentence was 380 months. That converts to 31 years and eight months in prison before accounting for the 196 days of jail credit reported in court-record-based coverage. The term is significant not only because of its length but because it marked the transition from accusation to punishment. Early reports appropriately described Yang as charged or accused. After the plea, the central allegation was no longer unresolved: Yang had admitted intentional second-degree murder in court.
The case is also defined by the narrow stretch of time between a family court decision meant to change De’Ali’s living arrangement and the toddler’s death. The temporary custody ruling did not instantly place De’Ali physically in Delgado’s care. She returned from court with Yang and family members to the Champlin residence. It was during that interval that Yang took the child upstairs and administered the medication, according to her admissions and the complaint.
That chronology distinguishes the verified facts from broader assumptions that can surround custody-related killings. Delgado had raised concerns. Police had recently issued and then canceled an endangered-person alert after Yang and the child were found. A judge had heard the custody dispute and decided that temporary custody should go to the father. But no reliable source reviewed for this article established that officials knew Yang would kill De’Ali after the hearing or that authorities possessed evidence of a specific imminent plan that afternoon.
De’Ali’s family has worked to ensure that her life is not reduced to court filings and a sentence. Her obituary says she was born July 25, 2024, in Minneapolis and had a joyful personality. She loved mashed potatoes and horchata and strongly objected if someone tried to take her drink away. Books, musical instruments and noisy toys captured her attention. She danced, bounced and talked in the expressive way of a young toddler.
The obituary also describes a close connection between De’Ali and her father. Delgado called her his “Chunky Monkey” and “Mamas,” according to the memorial, and frequently told her she was beautiful. The family said De’Ali loved other children but was especially attached to her father. A private Mass of Christian Burial was planned after her death.
Those memories sit outside the legal language of intentional murder, custody motions and sentencing calculations, but they are part of the same record left behind by the case. De’Ali was alive for less than a year and a half. During the final week of her life, police briefly searched for her, her father pursued emergency custody, a judge transferred temporary custody to him, and her mother killed her before that new arrangement could take effect.
Yang’s 380-month sentence means the murder prosecution now has a conviction and prison term. The public reports reviewed for this article do not identify another pending criminal defendant in De’Ali’s death. The lasting facts are therefore sharply divided: a custody dispute that ended with a ruling for the father, a killing committed hours later and a toddler whose family remembers her for a personality far larger than the court record that followed her death.
Author note: Last updated October 19, 2026.