Neighbors Testify in Scalding of Child

Neighbors of an Oxnard couple accused of plunging their 3-year-old son into a bathtub of scalding water testified Monday that they saw the injured toddler shortly after he was scalded but his parents refused to take him to a hospital.

“They were afraid the children would be taken away,” said Yujani Peinado, 17, during a preliminary hearing in Ventura County Superior Court for Maria and Alfredo Esquivel.

The couple, both 26, are charged with seven felony counts, including torture and child abuse, stemming from the Dec. 21 incident.

The Esquivels, who were convicted in 1999 of beating their then 2-year-old daughter, have pleaded not guilty to the charges.

The couple have four children.

Peinado, who lives in the house in front of the Esquivel’s converted-garage apartment, said she went to their home about noon that day after she realized she had not heard their children laughing and playing.

Peinado saw young Fabian quietly lying on a bed, with one of his legs burned to a pinkish hue.

Peinado said Maria Esquivel told her she had taken the boy out of the tub and put him on a little rug “and when she went to get a towel, he got back in the bathtub.”

But Oxnard Police Det. Kenneth Klapman, who investigated the case, said Fabian’s 6-year-old brother, Pedro, told him that the Esquivels plunged their son into the hot water after he soiled his underpants.

Klapman said Pedro told him Fabian “was screaming, and I heard him say ‘Stop it, Poppy!’”

“He screamed ‘Ow!’ as he was plunged into the bathtub,” Klapman said.

Veronica Ayala, who lives in a room in the converted garage with her two children, said Fabian did not appear to be seriously injured, and she left about half an hour later.

Ayala said Alfredo Esquivel told Maria they should call 911, but Maria rejected the idea, saying “They’re going to take [the children] away from us. I don’t know what I’m going to do.”

Although Peinado said the boy did not appear to be in pain, Dr. Daniel Lozano, a burn surgeon at UC San Diego Medical Center who treated Fabian seven days after he was injured, said the child could have been in shock from the second- to third-degree burns.

The boy was admitted to the medical center on Dec. 28 after being transferred from a hospital in Tijuana, Mexico, where his parents took him the day of the incident, said Randy Tucker, defense attorney for Alfredo Esquivel.

When asked outside court, Tucker refused to explain why the Esquivels sought medical attention for their son in the border city instead of in a hospital closer to home.

Lozano said that by the time he saw Fabian, the boy’s feet and legs were inflamed with bacterial and fungal infections, and that he had to surgically remove the burned skin and apply skin grafts to his toes.

“I was initially concerned that we would have to amputate his toes and possibly his feet,” Lozano said. “His toes, especially, were cold to the touch and black.”

The surgeon said that if Fabian had received proper medical attention soon after he was burned, he might not have had to undergo surgery.

“This was a significant setback,” Lozano told Deputy Dist. Atty. David Lehr.

“I’m not sure if he can walk properly or whether he will be able to run again.”

Fabian and his three siblings are in the care of foster families, Lehr said.

In 1999, Alfredo Esquivel pleaded guilty to hitting his daughter Luz, now 5, with an electrical cord and a sandal while the the family was living in South Lake Tahoe, Calif. Maria admitted providing the objects and watching the beating.