The California mother said she was drunk and crashed her car into the canal, leaving her 4-year-old daughter in the back seat of a submerged vehicle and went home to take a bath.
Juliet Marie Acosta, 26, had blood alcohol levels nearly three times the legal limit when she allegedly crashed into an irrigated canal near Hickman, a small town east of Modesto on March 8th. According to the Stanislaus County District Attorney’s Office.
The drunk mother leaves the submerged car where her daughter, Reagan Herrin, was trapped in the car seat. Acosta “was bathing while my daughter was in danger from the crash scene,” the DA’s office said in a press release on Saturday.
Reagan’s uncle, who lives nearby, helped pull nie from Subaru when police arrived at the scene, officials He told Sacramento Bee. TOT was rushed to a local hospital, where she passed away the next day.
Acosta’s lawyer, Gil Samela, denied that his client had subsequently taken a bath.
“When it comes to the timeline, it’s almost impossible to do both of them,” he said. He claimed to be an independent. “Time-wise, if your daughter is in the canal rather than next to her house, you cannot take a bath while her daughter is in her own death. Logically, that doesn’t make any sense.”
Acosta was initially charged with driving under the influence, but prosecutors attacked her on Friday with additional charges, including murder.
She was detained in a San Francisco hotel after trying to escape, and her father was also detained for allegedly trying to help her escape, according to the Sacramento Bee.
“The suggestion that my client was trying to get away is completely wrong,” Samela said.
Acosta is being held without bail, the District Attorney’s Office said.
If convicted, she could face life in prison.
“It’s about whether it’s manslaughter versus murder,” Samela told the Independent. “And I think the public is always looking at this and saying, ‘Well, you did or didn’t.”
“Guilt is guilt, but it’s a guilt, a centre of the surroundings with punishment, and now everyone wants to go round to their mothers in prison,” he added.
