Dad gets 20 years for stabbing of 6-week-old son (Romeoville, Illinois)

On Mother's Day 2008, father MIGUEL VILLARREAL locked himself in the bathroom with his 1-month-old son and stabbed him twice in the chest with a folding knife. He then attempted to stab himself. (Daddy blames all this on an "argument" with the baby's mother--the usual crock of bull.) Somehow the baby survived. Dad has been convicted of attempted 1st-degree murder and aggravated battery of a child, and was sentenced to 20 years in prison.

http://www.suntimes.com/news/24-7/1667347,man-prison-stabbing-infant-joliet-071509.article

Man gets 20 years for stabbing of 6-week-old son

July 15, 2009
FROM STNGWIRE REPORTS

A southwest suburban man who stabbed his 6-week-old son in the chest with a folding knife last year was sentenced to 20 years in prison Wednesday.

Miguel Villarreal, 26, of 1914 Cobblestone in Romeoville was convicted May 7 of attempted first-degree murder and aggravated battery of a child by a WIll County jury. Circuit Judge Amy Bertani-Tomczak handed down the 20-year sentence on Wednesday, according to a release from the Will County State's Attorney's office.

During an argument with the child’s mother on Mother’s Day 2008, Villarreal locked himself in the bedroom with the baby, stabbed him twice in the chest over the heart and then stabbed himself in the stomach in a murder-suicide attempt, the release said.

The stab wounds did not pierce the baby’s chest plate. The baby recovered but his chest will be scarred for life, the release said. Villarreal was rushed to the hospital and survived after the knife was removed from his stomach during emergency surgery.

When Romeoville detectives and paramedics arrived, they found the 15-pound infant covered in blood that they initially believed was from Villarreal’s self-inflicted knife wound, the release said. But when they removed the child’s blood-stained Winnie the Pooh pajamas, they found the stab wounds inflicted by his father.

Detective Sgt. Ken Kroll followed Villarreal into surgery so the knife could be placed into police custody immediately after it was removed from the defendant’s stomach.“Miguel Villarreal committed the most loathsome and repulsive act imaginable against his own child,” State’s Attorney James Glasgow said in the release. “The most secure place for this innocent and defenseless baby should have been in his father’s arms. Instead of protecting his newborn son, this reprobate pulled out his knife and used it to perform a sadistic act of inconceivable savagery.”