Prosecutor: Father killed son in "violent, merciless attack" (Riverside, California)

More on the trial of dad ALEX BAEZA, who is accused of mudering his son during visitation ordered by family court judge John Pacheco.

Thank you to Paul Young and the Valley News for not forgetting to name the authorities that made this crime possible.

http://www.myvalleynews.com/story/58366/

Prosecutor: Father Killed Son in 'Violent, Merciless Attack'
Wednesday, August 31st, 2011
Paul Young
Special to the Valley News


RIVERSIDE - A Moreno Valley man's "selfish rage" caused the death of his 2-year-old son, whose injuries were equivalent to the kind suffered in a severe car wreck, a prosecutor said today.

"Blunt force trauma killed this little boy, and Mr. (Alejandro Alfonso) Baeza is the only one who could have inflicted the injuries," Riverside County Deputy District Attorney Burke Strunsky said in his closing statement in the defendant's trial.

Baeza, 27, could face 25 years to life in prison if convicted of murder and assault on a child resulting in great bodily injury in the April 2010 death of Isaac Gallegos.

Defense attorney Darryl Exum maintains Isaac's death was an accident.

"The child did fall while in my client's custody," he said. "But it's a stretch to call that abuse."

The youngster was with his father for a daylong custody visit when he suffered a head injury that resulted in hemorrhaging which precipitated his death, according to Strunsky.

"Isaac died at the hands of his father," the prosecutor told jurors. "Alex Baeza's selfish rage inflicted incredible harm on this 2-year-old boy. How could a father do that?"

Strunsky recounted the testimony of three medical experts who all came to the same conclusion: only abuse or the "force of an auto crash" could have caused the level of head trauma that claimed Isaac's life.

"This was a violent, merciless attack," he said, displaying photos of the child on life support at Loma Linda University Medical Center, where he lingered in a coma for three days before succumbing to his injuries.

Doctors concluded that violent shaking was most likely responsible for Isaac's condition, according to Strunsky.

He replayed videotaped interviews of Baeza explaining to sheriff's detectives how his son might have been hurt. The defendant offered three different scenarios, including one in which he walked out of the room and the tot tumbled off a bed, and another in which he accidentally dropped the boy while changing his diapers.

According to the prosecutor, Baeza was tired of paying child support. His ex-girlfriend, Andrea Gallegos, did everything in her means to protect their son, Strunsky said, documenting bruises that appeared following each custody visit with the defendant.


The Fontana woman took her concerns to a San Bernardino County family court judge, John Pacheco, requesting that he deny further unsupervised visits between Baeza and Isaac. But she was accused of making up the allegations in order to gain exclusive custody rights, according to the prosecution.

On April 10, 2010, Baeza called 911 and reported his son was in respiratory distress. The boy was rushed to a hospital, where doctors discovered he was bleeding cranially, to the point that his brain was "actually pushing out from his skull," Strunsky said.

According to the defendant's attorney, the injury that caused Isaac's death may not have been the one he suffered at his father's Moreno Valley house. He said the bruises the boy's mother documented could have been caused by any number of things.