A young mother charged with tossing her newborn baby in a dumpster behind a New Mexico shopping center has been sentenced to 18 years in prison.
Alexis Avila was caught on camera dumping her newborn in the trash outside a mall in the city of Hobbs, near the Texas border. Surveillance video taken from the parking lot on Jan. 7, 2022 shows her pulling up in a white car and tossing a black bag into the dumpster, before speeding off.
A group of people scouring the garbage for items of value found the infant, born just hours earlier, a short a time later. They initially believed the baby to be an animal, but when they pushed aside the rubbish, they discovered the newborn inside a trash bag and wrapped in a dirty blanket with its umbilical cord still attached.
Avila, who was 18 at the time, told officers she was not aware she was pregnant before she went into labor.
She was convicted last month on a count of child abuse involving great bodily harm after a days-long trial, during which a public defender argued Avila’s actions were not premeditated and that she suffered mental health issues.
Judge William Shoobridge during a sentencing hearing on Monday told Avila that had it not been for luck he likely would’ve been presiding over a murder case, noting there was a high probability the child would have died had it not been found.
He sentenced her to 18 years in prison, but cited Avila’s mental health concerns and age in suspending two years of the punishment.
Avila told the judge she wants to better learn how to deal with stress and anxiety and that she regrets missing out on her son’s earliest moments.
“I regret his first hours of life were traumatic, and I regret that he will always have this in the back of his head and will think I do not love him because that’s what he’ll read and hear,” she said. “But that’s not true at all. I do love him. I truly do.”