TRIAL OPENS IN CHILD'S DEATH.
Jason Kandel Staff Writer
Maricela Arcelia Chavez brutalized her 4-year-old niece using karate-like chops, and then dressed her in a Communion outfit as she was dying, a prosecutor said in a Van Nuys courtroom Tuesday.
"She sets up an altar for the child, dresses her in a Communion dress, sets a candle, places a doll with the child, stays with the child as the child's life expires," said Deputy District Attorney Maureen Green.
Chavez then took her niece's body to the LAPD's North Hollywood division and claimed she had drowned, Green said.
The details came during opening statements in the case against Chavez, 47, who is accused of beating her 4-year-old niece, Maria Isabel Cervantes, to death in September 2001 after the girl wet her pants and spit up food.
A jury of nine men and three women listened intently as Green told her account of the crime. Wearing a gray sweater and grasping a handkerchief handkerchief. In classical Greece pieces of fine perfumed cotton, known as mouth or perspiration cloths, were often used by the wealthy. From the 1st cent. B.C. , Chavez shook and sobbed as prosecutors described the evidence they would present to the jury during the trial.
Chavez has pleaded not guilty to one count of murder and two counts of inflicting corporal punishment corporal punishment, physical chastisement of an offender. At one extreme it includes the death penalty (see capital punishment), but the term usually refers to punishments like flogging, mutilation, and branding. Until c. on a child under eight years old.
The attorney representing Chavez, Dennis Chavez, declined to give his opening statements Tuesday, saying he will wait until the prosecution's case ends and his opens.
During the prosecution's opening, Green described how Chavez stayed in the room with Maria's body and the makeshift altar through the night. Chavez' daughter, Patricia, eventually knocked on the bedroom door and convinced her mother to go to the police station, she said.
"Her boyfriend drives the defendant to the North Hollywood station and the defendant walks into the station with the child in outstretched arms," Green said. "She tells the police that (Maria) drowned."
LAPD Officer Lizette Makarenko said during testimony she was the first one to see Chavez when she walked into the station Sept. 28, 2001, with a bundled pink blanket.
"She said, 'Help me, please. She drowned,"' Makarenko said.
But later during police interviews, Chavez confessed to the crime, according to the testimony.
"She said she never lost her temper like that before. She said she wanted to die with the child," Makarenko said.
The officer also testified that Chavez had contemplated disappearing with the child's body.
Chavez had taken custody of Maria in November 2000 after her mother, Magdalena Sandoval, was gunned down by stray bullets fired by gang members on Blythe Street in Van Nuys. TRIAL OPENS IN CHILD'S DEATH.
Jason Kandel Staff Writer
Maricela Arcelia Chavez brutalized her 4-year-old niece using karate-like chops, and then dressed her in a Communion outfit as she was dying, a prosecutor said in a Van Nuys courtroom Tuesday.
"She sets up an altar for the child, dresses her in a Communion dress, sets a candle, places a doll with the child, stays with the child as the child's life expires," said Deputy District Attorney Maureen Green.
Chavez then took her niece's body to the LAPD's North Hollywood division and claimed she had drowned, Green said.
The details came during opening statements in the case against Chavez, 47, who is accused of beating her 4-year-old niece, Maria Isabel Cervantes, to death in September 2001 after the girl wet her pants and spit up food.
A jury of nine men and three women listened intently as Green told her account of the crime. Wearing a gray sweater and grasping a handkerchief handkerchief. In classical Greece pieces of fine perfumed cotton, known as mouth or perspiration cloths, were often used by the wealthy. From the 1st cent. B.C. , Chavez shook and sobbed as prosecutors described the evidence they would present to the jury during the trial.
Chavez has pleaded not guilty to one count of murder and two counts of inflicting corporal punishment corporal punishment, physical chastisement of an offender. At one extreme it includes the death penalty (see capital punishment), but the term usually refers to punishments like flogging, mutilation, and branding. Until c. on a child under eight years old.
The attorney representing Chavez, Dennis Chavez, declined to give his opening statements Tuesday, saying he will wait until the prosecution's case ends and his opens.
During the prosecution's opening, Green described how Chavez stayed in the room with Maria's body and the makeshift altar through the night. Chavez' daughter, Patricia, eventually knocked on the bedroom door and convinced her mother to go to the police station, she said.
"Her boyfriend drives the defendant to the North Hollywood station and the defendant walks into the station with the child in outstretched arms," Green said. "She tells the police that (Maria) drowned."
LAPD Officer Lizette Makarenko said during testimony she was the first one to see Chavez when she walked into the station Sept. 28, 2001, with a bundled pink blanket.
"She said, 'Help me, please. She drowned,"' Makarenko said.
But later during police interviews, Chavez confessed to the crime, according to the testimony.
"She said she never lost her temper like that before. She said she wanted to die with the child," Makarenko said.
The officer also testified that Chavez had contemplated disappearing with the child's body.
Chavez had taken custody of Maria in November 2000 after her mother, Magdalena Sandoval, was gunned down by stray bullets fired by gang members on Blythe Street in Van Nuys.