Man Pleads Guilty in Death of 6-Year-Old

A man charged with killing a 6-year-old girl whose half nude body was found hanging from the rafters of her family's garage pleaded guilty to capital murder Friday and was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Shaun Earl Arender, 21, entered his plea as part of a deal with prosecutors that called for him to testify about the 2007 killing of Hanna Mack. In an hour of testimony, Arender placed the blame on the former live-in boyfriend of Hanna's mother, claiming he was just going along with the sexual assault of the first-grader when she died.

Calmly answering rapid-fire questions from Navarro County District Attorney Lowell Thompson, Arender described how the other man choked the girl after she awoke during a sexual assault on a couch in the garage, then how the two decided to hang her body.

"I just stared," Arender said. "That's all I could do. After he started choking her again, she finally ended up passing out again. I just flipped out more and started hollering. ... I said, 'She's dead.' "

Hanna's body was found hanging before sunrise on a September morning in the rural town of Navarro Mills, about 65 miles south of Dallas. Arender, who lived near the Mack home, was charged a few weeks after the crime.

Thompson said Arender's testimony alone isn't enough to prosecute the boyfriend, and the decision whether to charge him will come after a separate investigation. That man is in jail on child pornography possession charges, a jail official said Friday.

The Associated Press is not naming the man because he has not been charged in the girl's death.

Before Arender's testimony, as he was entering his plea, the girl's mother began sobbing loudly. She was escorted out of the courtroom and did not return.

Thompson said he had discussed the plea deal with the girl's family, and that they agreed life in prison was acceptable. The sentence for capital murder in Texas is life in prison or death.

Arender testified that the incident began while the two men were staying up late smoking marijuana and talking about pornography, among other things. Later, Arender said, he was sitting on stairs near the front porch when he saw the boyfriend molesting Hanna.

When Hanna suddenly cried out, the man grabbed her by the throat and took her to the garage and then tried to talk Arender into assaulting the girl, Arender said.

"When I got to the garage, he said, 'It's OK; she does this all the time,' and that she just wanted to have sex all the time," Arender testified.

Both men assaulted her, Arender said, but when she woke up and screamed the boyfriend began choking her. Once they believed she was dead, he said they decided to hang the girl.

"Did you tie the knot around her neck?" Thompson asked Arender.

"Yes," he answered, then said the other man tied the rope to the rafters while he held the body. Arender said he then let the body go.

They then decided to make the house look like it had been burglarized and Arender returned to the home where he was living, a few blocks away, and smoked more marijuana, he testified.

"I knew it was going to be hard for people to hear," Thompson said after the hearing. "But given the importance to the community, I thought it would be best as part of this deal for some closure."

Mark Griffith, Arender's lead attorney, said he hoped the testimony brought closure for Hanna's family.

"I don't know if it's possible to give peace to the family of Hanna Mack," Griffith said after the hearing. "But now they know exactly what occurred."

Arender testified he was out of prison on parole at the time of the crime. Griffith said those crimes were petty theft and burglary.

Arender was charged after a DNA sample taken from the shirt Hanna was wearing indicated he was a possible match, according to an arrest affidavit. Navarro County authorities later confirmed the girl was sexually assaulted.

Hanna died "by asphyxiation by a manner and means unknown," the affidavit states.

According to family members, the girl's mother, Dana Mack, last saw her asleep on the couch around 1 a.m. She discovered her hanging body hours later.