San Gabriel Valley : MURDER TRIAL
Jury selection began this week in the case of a Pomona woman accused of murdering her newborn son by throwing it to a pit bull puppy in her neighbor’s yard.
Araceli Banda Garcia, 21, was charged with murder and felony child abuse in the 1995 mauling.
At a preliminary hearing in March, police testified that Garcia admitted to secretly giving birth in the bathroom of her parents’ home and then throwing her placenta into a dumpster and her baby over the neighbor’s fence, Pomona Det. Raul Camargo said.
The baby died after it was thrown over a fence and then mauled by one of the neighbor’s two pit bulls, according to the coroner’s testimony.
Garcia, a mother of two, told police that she hid her pregnancy from her family because her father had threatened to throw her out of the house if she had another baby out of wedlock.
If sentenced, Garcia could face 25 years to life in prison, prosecutors said.
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