Woman Gets Life Term for Kidnaping, Burning Boy : Courts: She had posed as the toddler’s mother in abducting him, then set a car afire with him in it.

A woman who kidnaped a toddler and then left him in a car and set it afire was sentenced to life in prison Monday.

Belinda Crawford, 38, became emotional only once during the 40-minute hearing in Compton Superior Court, addressing the court after the mother of 3-year-old Samuel Jones Jr. had finished speaking.

“I hurt too,” said Crawford as tears rolled down her face. “Just like your son hurt, I hurt too. I hurt all the time.”

Last May 25, Crawford posed as the boy’s mother and took him from a day care center in Long Beach. She drove the child to Watts, where she set the car ablaze. A 15-year-old passerby rescued the boy.

The boy suffered severe lung damage and third-degree burns over 60% of his body and lost all of the fingers on his right hand. He is still undergoing physical therapy at an undisclosed medical center, but was allowed to go home for a short Christmas visit.

Crawford was convicted last month of kidnaping, attempted murder, torture and arson. She was also convicted of committing the crimes with special circumstances, which added 25 years to the life sentence. Judge Sherman W. Smith Jr. ordered that the sentences run consecutively. Deputy Dist. Atty. Cheryl Gaines said during a break in the hearing that Crawford and the boy’s mother, Nita Jones, had been romantically involved. The mother denied that contention.

Her motive in the incident was “revenge against the mother for breaking up the relationship, and (staying with) her husband,” Gaines said.

The boy’s mother and father, surrounded by friends and relatives, held hands throughout the court hearing.

Reading a statement, the mother said Crawford “knows that she has caused a great deal of pain and hardship for us. My family and I are still trying to figure out how and why Ms. Crawford said she loved my baby and then tried to take his life.”

Smith told Crawford he hoped she would remember for the rest of her life that the boy “suffers every time he sees his siblings around him playing, knowing that he’s never going to play like that.”

The boy is expected to walk again, although he will have to wear braces, his mother said. Sometimes his spirits are down, “but we keep them up and he keeps ours up,” she said.