Background: Self Storage Plus in Bel Air, Maryland (Google Maps). Inset: Gloria Elena Hughes (Harford County (Md.) Sheriff’s Office).
A woman in Maryland who admitted to beating her 3-year-old son to death has been deemed not criminally responsible for the crime.
As Law&Crime previously reported, Gloria Elena Hughes, then 37, was seen on surveillance video at a self-storage facility in Bel Air on Dec. 3, 2023, beating her 3-year-old son, Jason Garcia. She was later spotted by an off-duty sheriff’s deputy at around 5:30 a.m. wandering along a street, carrying the boy’s lifeless body in her arms.
Police, already dispatched for a call about a “cardiac arrest involving a child” in the area of the storage unit, soon arrived and arrested her.
Hughes, now 39, pleaded guilty to first-degree murder and first-degree child abuse in Harford County Superior Court in July, according to Maryland criminal court records. Prior to the plea, she had been scheduled to start trial on Tuesday.
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Court records also show that she has been found “not criminally responsible” for the boy’s death. Under state law, this is a legal determination not unlike an insanity defense; when claimed by the defendant, the case can be bifurcated, with the guilt phase separate from sentencing, potentially resulting in a defendant simultaneously being found guilty while also not criminally responsible. According to legal experts, a defendant found guilty but not criminally responsible is handed over a state hospital instead of being sent to prison.
According to a report from the Morganton News Herald, a local publication in the North Carolina city where Hughes lived before coming to Maryland, Hughes has indeed been transferred to a state psychiatric facility for an undetermined amount of time.
According to the surveillance footage, Hughes was seen slamming the boy into the pavement multiple times, and police say she was also rough in handling the child’s legs.
“If there’s evil — that’s evil. It’s pure evil. It hurts all of us,” Bel Air Police Department Chief Charles Moore said at the time.
Police said investigators learned Hughes had allegedly brushed off a stranger’s attempt to intervene 24 hours before the child died, when a Bel Air resident reportedly saw her in a car with the toddler crying. Hughes allegedly told the person to leave her alone before driving off in her car.
Police learned Hughes had come to the region from Morganton, North Carolina, amid a “custody battle” with the young boy’s father, Baltimore ABC affiliate WMAR reported. After her arrest, police said they learned that Garcia’s father had previously contacted authorities to alert them that Hughes could be leaving North Carolina and headed for Maryland.
Court records show that Hughes was deemed incompetent to stand trial in December 2023, but by June 2024 her competency for trial purposes had been restored. Her “not criminally responsible” plea was officially entered the following month.
Maryland court records indicate that Hughes’ case is officially closed.
Brandi Buchman contributed to this report.
