Man Convicted of Murdering Girlfriend’s Baby : Courts: Guilty verdict is returned despite the mother’s testimony that he was innocent. Earlier she had told police he had slammed the child’s head against a wall.

A man was convicted Thursday of murdering his live-in girlfriend’s baby in Santa Ana last year, even though the woman testified he was innocent.

Jurors deliberated about a day and a half before finding Celerino Ochoa, 19, of Santa Ana guilty of second-degree murder and felony child abuse in the death of 21-month-old Carina Ramirez. Ochoa faces up to 15 years to life in state prison when he is sentenced Nov. 3 by Orange County Superior Court Judge Francisco P. Briseno.

The toddler’s mother, Maria Delgado, insisted tearfully afterward that Ochoa did not kill her daughter. She met Ochoa a few months before the incident.

“How could he kill her? There was no murderer,” Delgado said, leaving the courthouse.

Delgado took the witness stand and recanted her previous statements to police that incriminated Ochoa in the Oct. 14 death.

Those statements were the backbone of the prosecution’s contention that Ochoa killed the girl by flinging her against a bedroom wall. The girl collapsed on the floor soon after her mother heard a thump on the wall. The child never regained consciousness and died the next day at Fountain Valley Regional Hospital and Medical Center.

“It was a tough case,” said Deputy Dist. Atty. David Brent. “The evidence [of] who did this came from someone who said he didn’t.”

Brent has said Delgado changed her story at trial after receiving threats from Ochoa.

Delgado told police that Ochoa had slammed the girl’s head against a wall on other occasions, and described the thump Oct. 14 as the hardest yet. She told police the girl cried after the noise. Brent said that account was in line with a pathologist’s conclusion that the victim died of head injuries caused by a combination of impact and movement.

But Delgado gave a different account at the trial, insisting that Ochoa never hit the child and saying that the thump occurred when he dropped a stereo. She testified that she had made up accusations against Ochoa so that police would let her go home. Ochoa’s defense lawyer argued that the incriminating statements were coerced by police and said none of the 12 people living at the house saw Ochoa abuse the child.

“They convicted him on the smallest bit of evidence I have ever seen,” said Deputy Public Defender Deborah Barnum. She added: “Nobody said anything that he is a violent person or that they saw him hit anybody.”

Barnum suggested in the trial that the child could have died as the result of a fall. She said Thursday that another resident in the home might have been responsible.

“It could have been anybody,” Barnum said.

Barnum said Delgado’s 4-year-old son is living at Orangewood Children’s Home in Orange.