Prosecutors said he was not accused of murder, but chose to help conceal a 5-year-old’s death.
SYRACUSE, N.Y. — A man who admitted helping hide the body of a 5-year-old girl after her death was sentenced to 14 years in prison Tuesday, a term driven by a separate gun case and his status as a repeat felon, authorities said.
Corrice Parks’ sentence closes one part of a case that has drawn attention in Onondaga County since a child went missing and was later found buried. Prosecutors told the court there was no evidence Parks took part in the girl’s killing, but said he chose to help cover up the death. The girl’s mother, Latasha Mott, has pleaded guilty to murder and was scheduled to be sentenced the next day, leaving the court to confront what happened, who helped afterward and how the case will end.
Parks was sentenced in Onondaga County Court for two sets of crimes that the judge and lawyers said were not related to each other. One case stemmed from an October 2024 weapons arrest. The other grew out of the Jan. 6, 2024, death of Nefertiti Harris, who was 5. The prison time was set at 14 years on the weapons conviction, the longest term among the counts because Parks was treated as a second-felony offender. Two additional convictions connected to the child’s death, concealment of a human corpse and hindering prosecution, were ordered to run at the same time as the weapons sentence, meaning the 14-year term controls the length of the punishment.
Prosecutor Robert Moran urged the judge to focus on choice. In court, Moran said many defendants arrive in the system because of addiction, poverty or violence around them, or because they were pushed into an impossible corner. He said that was not the record he saw in Parks’ case. “Mr. Parks is here because he made terrible decisions under circumstances that were not difficult,” Moran said, adding that the right thing to do was “obvious.” Moran told the court there had never been evidence that Parks was involved in the killing itself, but said that at some point Mott drew him into the aftermath. Moran said Parks chose to help Mott hide the child’s body instead of turning to family or calling for help.
The judge also heard from Parks, who said he was pulled into a tragedy and reacted out of fear and shock. Parks apologized in court and said he never should have been involved. “If you know me, you know that’s not my character,” he said. “I wish everyone would have got help, especially Nefertiti.” Parks also complained that he felt he had been treated unfairly during the court process and said he was “shut down” when he tried to speak up. Judge Matthew Doran did not address the fairness claim directly, but he did acknowledge the apology. Doran said it was the first time he had heard Parks say he was sorry in the case.
The events behind the charges were described in court records and earlier proceedings. Mott admitted in a January plea that she used a belt to beat her daughter to death at an apartment on West Beard Avenue in Syracuse on Jan. 6, 2024. Prosecutors said the child’s body was then moved and hidden before it was buried in a shallow grave in wooded land off Salt Springs Road. In the sentencing hearing for Parks, Moran said the evidence did not show Parks carried out the killing. Instead, the criminal counts tied to him centered on what happened after the girl died, including the concealment and efforts that investigators said made it harder to locate her.
The case has also included legal maneuvering over how it would be tried and how the defendants would be presented to a jury. Parks and Mott were described in court as former romantic partners, and Nefertiti was not Parks’ child. Lawyers for the two requested separate cases, citing the risk that each defendant would blame the other in front of jurors. That split shaped the way the case moved through court, with Parks facing both the child-related charges and a weapons case, while Mott faced a murder charge and related counts. The separate tracks also meant Tuesday’s sentencing for Parks landed just one day before the court was set to sentence Mott.
That proximity was felt in the room as lawyers, the judge and Parks talked about the consequences of the choices made after the child died. Moran told the court he had met Parks’ mother and sister during the case and described them as supportive. He said he believed Parks could have reached out to them instead of helping conceal a body. Doran said he believed the sentence was “appropriate and fair” given the combination of convictions, including what he described as a violent felony in the weapons case and the counts tied to the concealment and hindering. He added that when a defendant has two different cases at the same time, the overall sentence can appear harsh.
The hearing ended with a jolt. After Doran explained the sentence, Parks shouted in the courtroom and accused the judge of being “corrupt,” yelling that people in the room were “in cahoots.” Court officers moved to restore order as the proceeding concluded. The outburst stood in contrast to Parks’ earlier apology and underscored the tense emotions that have followed the case from the start, as the court weighed responsibility for a child’s death and the actions that followed it.
With Parks sentenced, the next major milestone in the case is Mott’s punishment. She was scheduled to return to court at 9:30 a.m. Wednesday for sentencing before Doran, and the court has said she faces 23 years to life in prison under the plea agreement. Prosecutors have said Parks retains the right to appeal in the weapons case, but the sentencing order in the child-related counts means his prison time will be served alongside the gun conviction rather than added on top of it.
Author note: Last updated February 12, 2026.