Background: Maya Hernandez in court with defense attorney Teryl Wakeman (Law&Crime). Inset: Baby Amillio (GoFundMe).
A California mom whose 1-year-old son died after she left him in the car while she was at a medical spa is very close to finding out her fate.
Maya Hernandez, 20, is on trial for second-degree murder, manslaughter, and two counts of child cruelty in connection with the hot car death of her 1-year-old son, Amillio, on June 29. As Law&Crime previously reported, Hernandez was getting lip filler at a med spa in Bakersfield, California, and allegedly left her two young sons in the car while she went inside for her appointment. Police said the outside temperature that day reached 101 degrees Fahrenheit.
When she returned to the car after her appointment, after allegedly leaving the little boys unattended for more than two hours, she noticed that Amillio seemed “off.”
Prosecutor Stephanie Taconi said during her opening arguments on Monday that Hernandez “chose vanity. She chose her appearance over her sons.”
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According to witnesses, Hernandez reportedly brought her “limp” and “purple” 1-year-old into the med spa while another witness removed her 2-year-old son from the car. A nurse who worked at the medical spa stated that the 2-year-old boy “looked like he was going to have a stroke.”
At a hearing in July, prosecutors stated that Hernandez was texting with staff members of the med spa before her appointment to ask them if she could bring her children in with her. The employee responded, “Sure if you don”t mind them waiting in the waiting room hun.” Despite that, Hernandez did not bring either of her children into the building.
During opening arguments, Taconi said Hernandez “chose to leave them in the car. She chose a break. She chose time to herself. She chose time to socialize with other adults. And again, that choice cost Amillio his life.”
Amillio was brought to the hospital, where he was found to have a temperature of 107.2 degrees. When he arrived, hospital staff said he was “pale with blue lips, feet and hands, unconscious and with no pulse,” Taconi said. Despite lifesaving measures, he was pronounced dead at 5:48 p.m.
While presenting a timeline of the day’s events, Taconi noted that the two little boys were “trapped” in their car seats as the heat rose outside. The prosecutor also presented text messages exchanged between Hernandez and others who had offered to watch her children while she got the procedure.
The prosecution concluded by saying, “There are no accidents here. There are no accidents in this case. This isn’t a case of a forgotten child whose mom was in a hurry. These were intentional actions, done willfully by the defendant.”
When the defense began their argument, Hernandez’s defense attorney Teryl Wakeman said, “This is an incredibly sad case about a 20-year-old mother of two, a car, and a terrible, awful mistake. But it’s not about murder.”
Wakeman also argued that when his client left the two boys in the car, “she left her kids in their car seats with cookies, a bottle of milk, each, and with [her older son] she left her phone so that he could watch TV.” When she left the boys, “the car was running, the air conditioning was on. Ms. Hernandez thought that the car would stay running, that the air condition would, likewise, remain on.”
The defense stated that they would concede to the manslaughter and child cruelty counts against Hernandez, but they plan to challenge the second-degree murder charge.
