Juana Perez Valencia was sentenced today to 15 years to life in state prison for
murdering her infant girl right after giving birth and tossing the corpse into a dumpster. After a first jury could not reach a unanimous verdict in January, a second one last September found the Anaheim 21-year-old guilty of one felony count of second
degree murder and one felony count of assault on a child with force
likely to produce great bodily injury resulting in death.
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See also:
Juana Perez Valencia Guilty of Murdering Newborn Baby Tossed in Dumpster
Juana Perez Valencia: Accused Baby Killer Blocked From Testifying in English
Inadvertently Funny OC Courthouse Quote of the Day!
Valencia was 19 in December 2009 when she gave birth to a girl in the
restroom of the Sombrero's restaurant on Katella Avenue in Stanton. The food server wrapped the newborn in a
plastic bag and dumped the 6.3-pound and 17-inch-long bundle of joy in the dumpster out
back, killing the child. The next day, Valencia checked into Anaheim Medical
Center, where she denied having just given birth
when asked by doctors, who suspected otherwise and contacted the Anaheim Police Department.
Concluding
Valencia may have dumped the body at her work, which is in the Orange
County Sheriff's Department jurisdiction, sheriff's investigators took
over the probe, discovered inconsistencies in her statements and tracked
her previous movements to Sombrero's, where the baby's body was was
found.
Facing two juries was not the only unusual part of Valencia's trial, as the Mexico City native was forced to testify in court in Spanish.
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OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.