Rochelle Valdez met eyes with the teenager convicted of killing her niece and grand-niece and had a word.

“I said, ‘I forgive you. And God forgives you. There’s hope for you and I pray you do good and make good decisions,’” said Valdez, emotionally exhausted after the teen’s four-and-a-half hour sentencing hearing Tuesday. 

The boy, convicted of starting last year’s Lakewood apartment fire, was in handcuffs on his way to a juvenile corrections cell, where he will spend the next seven years.

Valdez said he seemed to have gotten taller. 

“Of course I’m hurt, but all I could think about was this poor kid,” she said.

Colorado law stipulates that juveniles convicted of a crime cannot serve more than seven years, meaning he will be 21 when he is released. He will serve his time at a Colorado Division of Youth services facility.

The teen pleaded guilty to six charges on July 24, including two counts of first-degree murder and first-degree arson for igniting what he and his 12-year-old accomplice called — according to testimony at his preliminary hearing — a “big ass fire.”

That hearing revealed that the boy and the 12-year-old started the blaze in retaliation for being kicked out of a bottom-floor apartment. They started it, the hearing indicated, by throwing a burning pair of pants on a dry bush directly underneath a wooden walkway.

The bodies of Kathleen Payton, 31, and her 10-year-old daughter Jazmine Payton-Aguayo were found in the bathroom of Unit 454, a towel jammed underneath the door shut tight to stop the smoke. The Oct. 31 fire, which happened at the Tiffany Square Apartments at 935 Sheridan Boulevard, injured 10, damaged 14 units and displaced 32 people, who woke up to flames just before dawn and fled in their nightclothes, some barefoot.

Surveillance video recorded from the west side of the Tiffany Square Apartments showed the fire was started at 4 a.m. and began snaking out of control within six minutes, video footage shown at the preliminary hearing revealed.

At earlier hearings, the boy’s attorneys said that he had a childhood filled with disruption and that he was a runaway. Valdez hopes he uses the years to think about what he did and “that the system doesn’t fail him.”

The Denver Gazette is not identifying the teen because he is a juvenile.

District Court Judge Ann Gail Meinster refused an expanded media coverage request — so the press was not allowed in Tuesday’s proceeding — because of its sensitive nature and because it involved a defendant who was under 18.   

The courtroom reserved for the sentencing was filled with dozens of relatives and victims of the early morning fire, many of them dressed in pink and purple in remembrance of “Katie and Jazzy.” Valdez said that around half-a-dozen of them gave victim impact statements. It was the first time that many of them had been face-to-face with the teen.

1st Judicial District Deputy District Attorneys Margaret Crabb and Riley Gonya argued that the maximum sentence, with no pre-sentence confinement credit, was necessary and justified and the only way to serve the community’s and the juvenile’s interests.

But ultimately, Meinster imposed the maximum sentence of seven years with 113 days of pre-sentence confinement credit.

Victim Ayonceé Hicks spoke on behalf of herself and her baby. The night of the fire, she jumped out of her second-floor back bedroom window to safety. A friend who was staying on the couch and first smelled the smoke had already grabbed her infant son and was on the ground pleading for Hicks to get out.

In a selfless move for which Hicks said she will forever be thankful, her friend cradled the infant in one arm and absorbed the fall with the other side of his body.

“I don’t complain too much because Demarion and I got a second chance at life,” Hicks told The Denver Gazette — though she said that she was triggered when October began.

In an earlier interview, she said that the two boys did not live at the apartment complex, but visited often and “knew there were babies here.” 

The mother and son spent two months in the hospital, Hicks with injuries to her feet and Demarion with smoke inhalation. Now two, the boy must go through emotional support and speech therapy due to the trauma he experienced a year ago. The two moved back into an undamaged apartment at Tiffany Square, which faces the L-shaped burned-out area now under construction, its new windows covered with ply-board.

A half-abandoned shopping center, which was next door to the apartments at the time of the fire, has been razed and is surrounded by fence. When the fire happened, neighbors said they didn’t feel safe because the alleys around the property had become a hide-out for drug users.

The defendant’s 12-year-old accomplice has not been sentenced. He was also charged as a juvenile and pleaded guilty to six charges, including two counts of first-degree murder and arson on July 24. His next appearance in court, a status hearing, is scheduled for Oct. 16.