EL CAJON (CNS) - A Campo man who smothered his 4-month-old daughter to death because she was fussing and he couldn't sleep was sentenced Wednesday to 15 years to life in prison.
Luis Alberto Duran, 22, pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in the June 25, 2010, death of Imalla Duran. His punishment was handed down by El Cajon Superior Court Judge Peter Deddeh.
Law enforcement witnesses testified last August that they went to the defendant's mother-in-law's home on Campo Truck Trail and found the baby lying on her back on the living room floor, near a pile of blankets. The infant could not be revived.
An autopsy turned up signs of several fresh injuries, including a hemorrhage under the baby's scalp. The San Diego County Medical Examiner's Office listed the cause of death as asphyxia as a result of smothering.
Sheriff's Detective Suzanne Fiske testified that after Duran's mother-in-law told an investigator she heard him yelling at the baby to shut up the night before, she questioned the defendant, who eventually conceded that he hit his daughter.
Later, he admitted smothering her, she said.
"He admitted he pushed the baby's head into the blankets until she stopped crying and stopped moving," Fiske said. "He said he was upset because he was trying to sleep."
Fiske said Duran woke up several hours later, and his daughter had not moved.
