Dead Baby’s Father Maintains Innocence : Investigation: Held on suspicion of murder after 8-month-old daughter’s death, he says she accidentally suffocated.

A print shop worker from Santa Ana who was arrested on suspicion of killing his infant daughter vowed from jail Sunday--amid sobs and moans--that he is innocent and that his baby died in a tragic accident.

Jorge Perez, 34, wearing a green jail shirt and pants, talked breathlessly from behind thick glass at the Santa Ana Detention Facility. “I have nothing to lie about,” Perez said in Spanish. “Who feels more pain about my dear baby’s death--me or the police? I’m already suffering because she died, and now they are accusing me of killing her.”

Santa Ana police went to a house in the 600 block of Borchard Street on Friday afternoon after receiving a 911 call from the home. The caller reported that a baby had stopped breathing.

Child abuse investigators were called when 8-month-old Kenya Perez was dead on arrival at a hospital, and officers arrested Jorge Perez shortly afterward.

Authorities refused Sunday to disclose what evidence they found to implicate Perez.

Perez said in the jail interview that he took a nap with Kenya at his side about 2:15 p.m. Friday. When he woke up at about 3:15 p.m., he said, Kenya had vanished. He said that when he got out of bed to see if a housemate had picked up the infant, he saw her body plunged headfirst into an empty hamper near the bed.

He said she probably woke up while he slept, crawled over the sheets, fell into the hamper and suffocated.

“If only there had been clothes inside, maybe she wouldn’t have died,” Perez said tearfully. “I failed my wife. I was supposed to take care of my baby, and I failed. I failed her.”

Police said they arrested Perez because he gave inconsistent accounts of what happened to the baby, but officers refused to give details. Coroner’s investigators have completed an autopsy on the baby, but neither coroner’s officials nor police released results.

Perez’s housemate, Joe Ortuno, said the Perez family had been renting a room in the house for about 2 1/2 months.

Perez said he and his wife, Clarissa Perez, immigrated to California from Mexico City with their first daughter, Marybelle, in 1989.

He said that during the last four years he has worked night shifts copying advertising circulars at Handbill Printers in Garden Grove, usually from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m.

On Friday, he said, he dropped off Clarissa Perez at the print shop, where she also worked, for her shift beginning at 1 p.m. Usually he took Kenya to be watched by a relative before picking up 8-year-old Marybelle at school, he said, but he decided to keep Kenya at home that day.

Perez said he dozed off for a quick rest because he had not slept well in three days. The baby was calm and had not been crying, he said. “I was sleeping so soundly, I didn’t hear her,” he said.

He said that after he saw her in the hamper, he tried to administer cardiopulmonary resuscitation. Then he tried to summon the boyfriend of Ortuno’s mother, who was asleep in another room.

When Ortuno ran to look at the baby, she was lying on the bed and her lips were blue. He then called 911.

Perez was frustrated that he had not been able to speak to his family by telephone since his arrest, and maintained his innocence. “I keep telling them what happened,” Perez said. “Why won’t they believe me?”

Perez is being held at the Santa Ana Detention Facility on suspicion of murder. Bail was set at $250,000.