Officials shocked by child deaths
June 22, 2008 - 12:12AM
By SEAN GAFFNEY/The Monitor

McALLEN - Sometimes the hardest thing about a death is grasping why it happened, especially when a mother is suspected of killing her own child, experts say.

Within a recent three-week span here, two Mexican nationals have been accused of killing their own children.

One was a 2-year-old boy who authorities suspect suffered repeated abuse, the other a 15-day-old girl stabbed to death the day after her hospital release.

While the cases are very different, the prospect of mothers taking young lives instead of nurturing them has shocked officials, whose own search for closure may have no end - even though the suspected killers have been charged with crimes.

"At the end of the day, I couldn't shake it off," McAllen Police Chief Victor Rodriguez said earlier this month about the May 29 killing of 15-day-old Gabriela Yamileth Corona outside a clinic in downtown McAllen.

"It's one of those few things that happens in our business sometimes that makes you stop and pause and ask why and how do things like this happen."

The mother in that case, 19-year-old Angelica Maria Gutierrez Acosta, sent police on a wild search for a kidnapper who didn't exist, according to authorities. After her baby's body was found, police say she confessed to stabbing Gabriela and making up the story to avoid prosecution.

Gabriela had no known history of abuse. Her short life was merely a series of doctor's visits, time spent in an incubator and barely a day outside the walls of the hospital where she was born.

Authorities say it's a different story for the youngest child of Maria Adalberta Almaguer. Less than three weeks after Gabriela's death, the 30-year-old Mexican national was accused of kicking her son Isaias Alvarez in the abdomen in the early morning of June 14, causing internal injuries that cut short the boy's life.

From womb to tomb
Almaguer is now five months pregnant with what is at least her sixth child. Like the son she is accused of killing, this baby could be born while she is in state custody, perhaps before her case even reaches trial.

Officials say Isaias' short life was marred by a string of hospital visits that eventually prompted state authorities to investigate Almaguer and prohibit her from seeing her children without supervision - an order authorities believe she defied the day Isaias was killed.

"When there's a tragedy like this ... I hug my sons and my daughter and I say, ‘We're lucky,'" said Robert Garcia, executive director of Estrella's House, a local children's advocacy center that seeks to prevent child abuse and minimize the trauma it causes.

"It broke my heart," he said. "I guess it broke a lot of people's hearts."

Isaias was hospitalized twice earlier this year with head injuries and then again earlier this month with a dislocated elbow, officials said. One of those hospital visits prompted a state investigation.

Two weeks before his death, Almaguer signed a "safety plan agreement" with the state, pledging she would visit her children only under supervision. John Lennan, a spokesman for the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services, has characterized that accord as a written promise but not a legally binding document.

The future of Almaguer's unborn child has yet to be decided, Lennan said.

‘We've got to do more'
More than 200 children die in Texas each year as a result of abuse or neglect, according to statistics provided by Family and Protective Services. Last year those numbers included five children in Hidalgo County.

"The best thing that somebody can do if they suspect abuse or neglect of a child is to call us," Lennan said. "All of our cases are initiated by reports, whether the reports come from the public, law enforcement or schools."

We may never understand why Gabriela and Isaias met the fates that they did, but their cases reinforce the importance of getting professional help for those suspected of having mental illness, said Esteban Gonzalez, a McAllen-based psychiatrist.

"People need to look at all the details. When we see people in the office, we're not rushed," Gonzalez said. "Hispanics, as a general rule - (and) as my patients - will say ... ‘You've got to be pretty crazy to go see a psychiatrist.' ... It's hard getting people through the door."

Whether the violence against children stems from a history of abuse, bipolar disorder or other mental health problems such as postpartum depression, there is no one factor that can predict it or yield a simple, easily understood solution to the problem, Gonzalez said.

In the end, officials said, the deaths of Gabriela and Isaias underscore how prevalent child abuse can be and how important it is to heed the signs of it and seek help if it occurs.

"We've got to do more," said Garcia, the children's advocacy center executive.

"Every morning you've got to look yourself in the mirror and say, ‘Did I do anything to prevent this?'"

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