Detective Testifies That Mother Knew Infant Was Alive at Birth

A farm worker accused of killing her newborn baby in July knew the infant was alive at birth but failed to call for help because she was afraid of being deported to Mexico, a sheriff’s detective testified Monday.

Ventura County Sheriff’s Detective Raul Munoz gave the testimony in Ventura County Superior Court where Francisca Sanchez Jimenez is on trial for murder in the death of the infant known as Baby Boy Sanchez. The baby’s body was discovered July 29 in the portable toilet where Jimenez gave birth the day before, according to testimony.

Munoz was one of two investigators who interviewed Jimenez after her arrest in September. In the 4 1/2-hour taped interview, Jimenez was asked if she could hear the baby breathing.

Munoz read her answer from a transcript: “I felt something drop from me, but I didn’t hear any breathing.”

When asked if she felt the baby moving, Jimenez said, “Well, I did feel that, but I had no strength.”

She told the investigators that she tried to save the baby, “but he had already all gone down.” At one point, Jimenez told Munoz that she lost consciousness, he testified.

In a pretrial hearing, Assistant Public Defender Jean L. Farley tried unsuccessfully to prevent the interview from being submitted as evidence, arguing that the poorly educated Jimenez did not understand that her statement could be used against her.

Munoz said the illegal immigrant insisted that she tried to save her child when he fell into the portable toilet, but failed to call for help because she was afraid that she would be deported if authorities found out.

“I did think they’re going to report me to immigration,” Jimenez told police. “I feel guilty because nothing like this has ever happened to me before.”

Shortly after giving birth, Jimenez asked Jose Ibanez Gonzalez, who used to drive her to the fields where they picked onions, to take her home.

Robert Velasquez, an investigator with the Ventura County district attorney’s office, testified that the toilet was only 18 inches deep, shallow enough for Jimenez to have reached the child.

Jimenez hung her head throughout Monday’s testimony.

She is also charged with the attempted murder of another newborn in May, 1990, when she allegedly tried to flush the baby down a toilet at her Oxnard home.

But Jimenez told police that she tried to save that baby, Munoz said. “The first time, I was going to retrieve the baby,” he read from the transcript.

The baby, Jose Luis, survived and is in foster care.

Sister Carmelita Padilla, who works as a nurse at St. John’s Regional Medical Center in Oxnard, testified that she saw Jimenez breast-feeding Jose Luis two or three times. She said Jimenez was a quiet woman, but answered all the questions from a social worker and police officer, which Padilla translated into Spanish.

The trial in the courtroom of Superior Court Judge Lynn D. Compton resumes at 9 a.m. today.

Jimenez is being held on $25,000 bail at Ventura County Jail. If convicted, she faces a maximum sentence of life in prison.