SATICOY : Examiner Testifies Baby Born Healthy

A newborn infant known as Baby Boy Sanchez breathed for as much as a minute before he expired in the tank of a portable toilet last July, Ventura County Medical Examiner F. Warren Lovell testified Tuesday in Superior Court.

Lovell, the last prosecution witness in the murder trial of Francisca Sanchez Jimenez, performed an autopsy on the infant July 31, three days after the 23-year-old farm worker allegedly left him to die in the toilet’s waste and chemicals in Saticoy.

Lovell described the newborn as a healthy, full-term baby who was 21 inches long and weighed 7 pounds, 5 ounces. The boy’s head was covered with thick black hair, the physician testified, and about 18 inches of umbilical cord extended from his stomach, ending in a ragged edge.

Lovell’s testimony appeared to undercut the defendant’s account of the incident, as portrayed Monday by two investigators who interviewed her when she was arrested a few months after the baby died. According to the investigators, Jimenez said she was sitting on the toilet and felt something fall from her body and disappear into the tank.

But the coroner said he doubted that an umbilical cord would simply break off, and he said he was certain that the baby had taken in enough air to float in the tank.

Eventually, the baby breathed fecal matter that blocked his windpipe, Lovell said. “That’s probably what killed him,” he said, adding that the infant also could have drowned.

Testimony resumes today before Judge Lynn D. Compton.