Yoselin Torres Tovar, who two days into her murder trial last month pleaded guilty to repeatedly stabbing her newborn girl to death and hiding
the corpse in the closet of her family's home, was sentenced Friday to 16 years to life in state prison.
That was the expected penalty after the 20-year-old copped to the slaying.
]
Then 18-year-old Tovar didn't want to have a baby, and no one in her family knew
she was pregnant when, between 7 and 9 a.m. on April 18, 2010, she gave
birth in the bathroom of her family's Fullerton
home. Tovar went on to stab the baby girl multiple times, wrap up the
body and place the bundle in her bedroom closet.
Family members
saw blood on Tovar and took her to St. Jude Hospital in Fullerton,
where doctors examined her and determined she had just given birth.
Shortly after police were alerted, Tovar
expelled the placenta at the hospital. That night, cops found the discarded newborn, and Tovar was arrested on suspicion of murder.
Newborn Baby Girl, 2010 OC Homicide No. 13: Young Mother Held
She pleaded guilty May 1 to one felony count of second degree murder
with a sentencing enhancement allegation for the use of a deadly
weapon.
Yoselin Torres Tovar, 2 Days into Murder Trial, Pleads Guilty to Stabbing Her Newborn to Death
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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.