Woman admits killing daughter

[Guest guest]

Looks like the system got another one.

What a shame

Charlie

July 2, 2005

Woman admits killing daughter

By CATHY SMITH

Sentinel staff writer

SAN JOSE — A former UC Santa Cruz student admitted Friday to killing

her 4-year-old daughter but said she was insane when she did it.

The prosecutor agreed Yesenia Quevedo, 29, was legally insane on

Dec. 13, 2003, when she gave Xiomara Tocalino some of her

antidepressant in a cup of tea and then suffocated her.

Quevedo will be sent to a locked state mental health facility,

perhaps for life, prosecutor Dan Nishigaya said, though she will be

able to petition the court for release. She returns to court Aug. 11

for a report outlining which facility would best suit her.

Two independent psychiatrists deemed her insane, Nishigaya said, and

those diagnoses plus extensive investigation convinced him as well.

He said Quevedo still suffers from paranoid beliefs that people are

out to harm her.

" We still think she's a danger, " Nishigaya said. " Basically, we have

to put our faith in the state mental health system. "

Quevedo appeared composed and lucid in the San courtroom,

shackled and in jail clothing, looking thin with her hair long and

pulled back in a pony tail.

Judge Jerome Nadler asked if she understood the proceedings and she

said she did. She told him the medication she was taking " doesn't

inhibit my ability to understand. "

Quevedo was an anthropology student living at UCSC when she and her

daughter went at Quevedo's grandmother's home in San to

celebrate the child's 4th birthday the next day.

Quevedo had been released from psychiatric care at Stanford Medical

Center a few days before and had been diagnosed with major

depression with psychotic tendencies. She told police she began

feeling depressed more than two years earlier, when her daughter was

about 6 months old. She said she attending UCSC " mentally

overwhelmed " her.

Quevedo sought psychiatric care in September 2003, but only went to

a few appointments, a Los Gatos psychiatrist told police. In October

2003, she tried to kill herself, believing that " truckers " and

others were following her and trying to harm her and her daughter.

The child's father, Tocalino, was in court Friday with

Quevedo's family. At the time of her arrest, he told police she was

a good mother. He said the pair had dated for six years and broke up

in 2002, but remained friends. He said she began " acting crazy "

after the pair split.

The family's attorney, Dan Barton of Palo Alto, said the case was

the most heartbreaking he has handled in 16 years of criminal

defense work. He said Quevedo was doing " OK. "

" She understands this is the right place for her to be, " he

said. " Yesenia never would have hurt her child if she wasn't insane.

It was unthinkable. And I don't think a moment goes by that she

doesn't want to hold her baby. "

Barton predicted that she would get out one day. Quevedo pleaded

guilty to second degree murder, and then pleaded not guilty by

reason of insanity.