EL CAJON : Prison Sentence in Death of Child

An El Cajon woman was ordered Wednesday to spend six years in state prison for killing a 10 1/2-month-old child she was baby-sitting.

Karen Ann Drouillard, 22, pleaded guilty in January to voluntary manslaughter in the death of Lizzabeth Rozado. She had originally been charged with murder and felony child endangerment.

The killing appeared to be a “callous disregard for human life,” Superior Court Judge John Thompson said.

Court records indicate Drouillard had provided several stories to account for the massive head injuries the infant received. In court Wednesday, defense attorney Albert Bradley said Drouillard had no recollection of the Sept. 23 incident because she has “blacked it out.”

Deputy Dist. Atty. Oscar Garcia said that Lizzabeth’s injuries were “consistent with the defendant swinging the child into a wall or throwing her to the ground.”

In one account of the incident, Drouillard said she had dropped the child. But Garcia said medical evidence indicates that the child would have been dropped from a height of at least 10 feet in order to suffer the skull fractures that led to her death. Garcia said there were bruises all around the baby’s head.

Drouillard lived in an apartment on Chambers Avenue with the baby and the baby’s mother. She was caring for Lizzabeth and her own child when the death occurred.