Fourteen-month-old Demitri Robledo's last few weeks of life were spent bound, gagged, beaten and starving at the hands of his caretaker's heroin-addicted boyfriend, a witness testified during a hearing in a Ventura courtroom Friday.
Teresa Rodriguez baby-sat her godson for several months while the child's mother served time in jail for a drug charge. During that time, Rodriguez said, she routinely watched boyfriend Patrick Santillano abuse the infant, who died in Oxnard on Oct. 22 from a blow to the head.
The worst abuse came, Rodriguez said, when the baby interrupted Santillano's efforts to inject himself with heroin.
"He was in the bathroom fixing," Rodriguez testified, "and the baby started crying and he came out mad. He had been in there over an hour and finally got a vein and he lost it, so he was mad. . . .He hit the baby across the face and put a sock in his mouth."
A few days later, Rodriguez, 21, rushed the infant to St. John's Regional Medical Center in Oxnard, where he was pronounced dead, the result of a brain hemorrhage, neglect and physical abuse. Rodriguez has pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter and general mayhem for failing to stop the attack. She faces up to 12 years and four months in prison when she is sentenced Nov. 1.
But prosecutors believe Santillano was chiefly responsible for Demitri's death. Santillano, 32, is charged with murder and child abuse. A judge will decide when the hearing concludes Monday if there is enough evidence to bring Santillano to trial.
Defense attorney Steven Powell has argued that Rodriguez was the main caregiver and the one responsible for the infant's death. Santillano, he contends, is just a "scapegoat."
Rodriguez said she began caring for the baby at her Oxnard home shortly after his first birthday, in August 2000, when the boy's mother, Yvette Robledo, was arrested on a drug charge. Authorities said Robledo regularly used heroin and that Demitri was born addicted to methadone.
Rodriguez, who had a daughter with Santillano and was pregnant at the time with their second child, said Santillano became increasingly abusive to Demitri. He called him names and by September of last year began slapping him. He then moved on to using a belt, and then socks to bind the baby's feet and hands--a move to prevent Demitri from picking at scabs that had developed on his ears, Rodriguez said.
