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Sugar Cookie

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First responders who tried to save the life of Maliyha Hope Garcia said it was like working on a corpse.

“She looked like she’d been dead a little while,” said Redmond Fire & Rescue Battalion Chief Garrick Terry during the second day of testimony in the child-starvation murder trial of Maliyha’s parents, Sacora Horn-Garcia and Estevan Garcia. “She was just the most emaciated thing I’ve ever seen.”

Nearly a dozen first responders — police, firefighter-paramedics and a chaplain — took the stand Tuesday in Deschutes County Circuit Court. They said they struggled for 17 minutes to find a sign of life before taking the 5-year-old girl to St. Charles Redmond.

They told the court they were not prepared for what they saw when they arrived at the couple’s small three-bedroom home on SW Metolius Avenue in Redmond.

“I walked in, and I was absolutely shocked,” said Redmond firefighter-paramedic Beth Mitchell. “She looked straight out of photos from the Holocaust.”

When she died Dec. 21, 2016, Maliyha weighed 24 pounds. The state alleges she was treated differently than her adopted siblings, dehumanized and deprived of basic care before ultimately succumbing to starvation.

First responders testified
Maliyha was cold to the touch, with pale blue-gray skin, as if the post-mortem condition of lividity had set in. And her limbs were stiff and would not extend, as if affected by rigor mortis.

Her hair was “very” wet, but the rest of her body — and her onesie pajamas — were completely dry.

“It was not what I had prepared in my mind to walk into,” said Redmond Detective Jared Kirk, who was the first professional to attempt lifesaving care on Maliyha. “She was extremely underweight. All her ribs were showing, and the skin was hanging from her arms.”

He described for the court an image echoed by every other professional to witness the emergency response: Maliyha’s legs rising and falling with each chest compression, but staying frozen in the same position.

Terry, the Redmond fire battalion chief, testified that at one point, he turned to a nearby police officer and said: “Do you see this? This does not look right.”

The officer agreed with him.

“Good, because I’ve never seen anything like this before,” Terry recalled
Audio was played from an interview between Horn-Garcia and Redmond detectives conducted hours after Maliyha died.

“She’s always been real healthy and has never really been sick,” Horn-Garcia told them.

Maliyha’s last doctor appointment was her 4-year checkup in January 2016. That doctor, Mary Rogers with Central Oregon Pediatric Associates, expressed concern with Maliyha’s weight. The doctor suggested switching Maliyha to whole milk and giving her more snacks.

In May 2016, Maliyha was pulled from day care.

“She’s always been a little slender,” Horn-Garcia said, “a little more petite.”
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The child-starvation murder trial of Estevan Garcia and wife Sacora Horn-Garcia began Friday with descriptions of a girl so hungry, she would steal crackers at day care, then sneak into a bathroom at nap time to eat them.

The final months of Maliyha Hope Garcia’s life, part of a flood of new information presented in Deschutes County Circuit Court, hinted at what’s to come in the Redmond couple’s trial.

Maliyha died Nov. 21, 2016. She was 5 and weighed 24 pounds. Her autopsy concluded starvation was the cause of death. Several months later, her parents were arrested and charged with murder and mistreatment for allegedly withholding adequate food and access to medical care.

But a gag order prohibited attorneys involved from discussing any part of the case.

Aaron Brenneman, who is representing Horn-Garcia, along with Lisa Calyn Valenta.

He called Maliyha’s death a “nightmare that keeps replaying” for his client.

“This wasn’t her husband’s niece that she lost — it was her daughter,” he said.

Horn-Garcia’s attorneys will argue Maliyha was not kept hidden in the months before her death. They’ll say the girl accompanied her parents and siblings on many outings and to medical appointments and no one ever shared concerns about her with authorities.

Brenneman said Maliyha was not treated differently than Horn-Garcia’s other children.

“Should she have gone to the doctor? Yes. We’re not here to argue that. But what you will see is concern, concern for condition and concern that she wasn’t getting better and concern with what to do,” Brenneman said.
 
There was no concern in the police audios after her death.
She’s always been slender????? Wtf?????
You mean she’s aleays been starved????
Never been told there was any concern???? The doctor who told her to be on full fat milk and have more snacks is not saying that for the hell of it......
(Actually I see what happened.......she took the child to the doctors at 4 years old, was told to increase milk and snacks so went home and increased her own potions, then wonders why little one isn’t putting on weight.....the doctor should have been clearer and said, give your daughter more snacks and full fat milk........)
Wow.
She was not her husbands neice that she lost , it was her daughter......she wasn’t lost, she was tortured to death through starvation....
This woman says she cares but hasn’t shown anything to prove it.
Nor did the daycare provider.
They only just now mention she used to sneak crackers and sneak into the bathroom at nap time to eat them?
They didn’t notice her frail tiny body?
They didn’t report anything?
If they did nothing is mentioned about that and they need to be held accountable for their part in not doing something about this....
The ones who need praising are the emergency workers who realised something was wrong and have shown more love and care by making sure this little girl gets some kind of justice and is not just a lost voice.....
Poor kid.
Did no one notice her passing out? was her vision ok? Being so underweight causes a hell of a lot of physical and mental health problems, so it makes me wonder what else this poor child had to suffer from before she died.....
Less than 2 stone in weight......
 
This woman says she cares but hasn’t shown anything to prove it.
Nor did the daycare provider.
They only just now mention she used to sneak crackers and sneak into the bathroom at nap time to eat them?
They didn’t notice her frail tiny body?
They didn’t report anything?
If they did nothing is mentioned about that and they need to be held accountable for their part in not doing something about this....
Totally agree! Daycare providers are Mandatory Reporters of Suspected Child Abuse in the U.S. If the daycare providers looked at the tiny, underweight little girl, saw her "stealing food" to feed herself, and I assume did absolutely nothing about it, they deserve to have the book thrown at them. A little girl is dead and the daycare could have prevented this had they reported suspected abuse to the police. Don't even bother contacting CPS. Call the police station and file a report!
To the neighbors, friends, relatives, and all others who witnessed this emaciated child, it does not take a genius to suspect there is some sort of abuse going on - why didn't the other witnesses call the police? People, we must step it up and report our suspicions on behalf of young kids who cannot defend themselves.
I do not normally believe in more police presence, but in situations like this, I do believe in letting the police - not CPS - decide whether our suspicions are correct or not. Children cannot speak up for themselves and it is up to each one of us to interfere when a crazy adult is abusing them in any way.
 
When Estevan Garcia took the witness stand in his defense, the hardest questions in his murder trial came from his own attorney, who asked: “How does a daughter starve to death before her father’s eyes?”

“You’re absolutely right. Essentially, my daughter died right before my eyes — I won’t make an excuse for it,” Garcia told his lawyer, Jon Weiner, in Deschutes County Circuit Court. “But I didn’t murder her.”

Garcia’s answers — his first public comments since his arrest in March 2017 for the starvation death of his 5-year-old daughter, Maliyha — described a home in turmoil and a marriage on the rocks.

Garcia and his wife, Sacora Horn-Garcia, are charged with intentionally withholding food and medical care to Maliyha, who died four days before Christmas 2016. She weighed 24 pounds. Starvation was ruled her cause of death.

Prosecutors are attempting to convince the jury the couple singled out Maliyha among their five children as their marriage crumbled and they sought an outlet for their frustrations. Garcia married Horn-Garcia about three years after adopting Maliyha.

Defense attorneys have pushed back against claims the couple didn’t love Maliyha and suggested they believed her declining health was the result of an undiagnosed medical condition.

On Thursday, it became clear how fractured the marriage was.

“I’m a single guy and I go and get married,” Garcia testified. “Now, I have the responsibility of a wife and four kids. I didn’t know it then, but I probably didn’t want to be married to Sacora.”

Garcia started dating Horn-Garcia, a recent widow with three young daughters. They were married four months later.

“Looking back, I don’t think Sacora ever really had time to grieve,” he said.

Before the defense began calling witnesses, the state ended its presentation last week with an outline of 26,000 text messages between the couple. They show near-constant tension between them. One recurring issue was Horn-Garcia’s insistence that Maliyha “use her words” and ask for food, instead of taking it from the kitchen without permission.

Among the key details revealed in the texts: The couple increasingly punished Maliyha by withholding meals and forcing her to scrub walls and floors.

Garcia was asked about this by his attorney.

Garcia said Maliyha regularly drew on surfaces around their home. One time, he said he entered her bedroom and discovered she’d smeared feces on her wall. This is when he made her try to clean the walls for several hours.

“It’s kind of ridiculous, you know,” he testified. “A 3-year-old probably loses the point after three minutes. You wish you made a different parenting decision. But again, if it was just me and Maliyha, I probably wouldn’t have made any decision. If it was just me and Maliyha, I probably would have just done it myself.”
 
Reading more about this case has made me hate this selfish prick even more than the mother.

No one forced him to take his sister's kids or marry the first bitch he found so he had a live in babysitter to care for those children.

If the jury does not convict him I know this world is really going to hell.
 
Sacora Horn-Garcia finished her testimony Wednesday without accepting responsibility for starving her 5-year-old stepdaughter.

Her husband and co-defendant, Estevan Garcia, had already testified during their joint murder trial in Deschutes County Circuit Court that he deserves punishment for not doing more to save Maliyha Hope Garcia, who died Dec. 21, 2016.

“There are times when the medical experts are wrong,” Horn-Garcia told the jury. “I believed at that time that there was something medically wrong with Maliyha.”

She said she regretted not taking Maliyha to a doctor sooner but did not elaborate.

“I didn’t realize Maliyha was dying,” she testified.

The defense rested Wednesday in the case of the Redmond couple accused of intentionally withholding food and medical care to Maliyha — but not before prosecutor Kandy Gies pressed Horn-Garcia.

Gies wanted Horn-Garcia to admit to treating the girl far worse than her older daughters, keeping her locked in her room and regularly withholding meals as punishment for minor offenses. Hundreds of text messages in evidence show a household consumed by a battle of wills between Horn-Garcia and a headstrong girl whose stepmother ordered her to “use her words.”

But Wednesday, it was Horn-Garcia who chose not to respond to questions about her actions.

“No disrespect to you,” she told Gies. “But do you remember everything you did, hour-by-hour, from four years ago?”

She denied contributing to Maliyha’s weight loss, often answering, “I don’t know,” or “I don’t recall.”

Witnesses and evidence in the trial have shown Maliyha had a normal development until her father married Horn-Garcia, a recent widow with three girls older than Maliyha.

Horn-Garcia described a series of mental health breakdowns that followed her first husband’s suicide. As her marriage to Garcia began to unravel shortly after their wedding, text messages in evidence show Horn-Garcia took her mounting anger out on Maliyha.
The last photo shown in court, taken two days before Maliyha’s death, shows the girl on the floor on her side, staring vacantly ahead. She stayed in that position during much of the final days of her life, relatives testified.

Her skin is translucent and the outline of her skull is visible.

“Does she look healthy to you?” Gies asked.

“No,” Horn-Garcia said.

On Maliyha’s last day alive, her mother gave her a bath, meaning she would have seen Maliyha in a condition similar to what the coroner saw. Gies asked Horn-Garcia why she did not take the child to a doctor.

Horn-Garcia said she didn’t know.

Several times, Gies asked Horn-Garcia how she parented her three older daughters.

“Historically, you demonstrate you know that children need medical attention,” she said. “Do you agree you failed Maliyha?”

“To an extent, yes,” Horn-Garcia.

Asked to clarify, Horn-Garcia said, “I failed her because I guess I didn’t pay close enough attention and I didn’t take her to the doctor soon enough, and I should have known, but I didn’t.”
 
@Satanica
A Redmond couple was found guilty Friday of the starvation murder of their 5-year-old daughter, Maliyha Hope Garcia, who weighed 24 pounds when she died Dec. 21, 2016.

The jury returned in the case of Estevan Adrian Garcia and Sacora Rose Horn-Garcia after roughly half a day of deliberations, finding them both guilty of murder by abuse and two counts of criminal mistreatment.

“We’re ecstatic,” said Barb Cook, Garcia’s aunt and guardian of five of Maliyha’s older sisters. “He is guilty.”

Cook and her husband, Russ, also raised Garcia for a time, and helped facilitate Maliyha’s adoption by Garcia when she was born and tested positive for meth.

They watched Garcia change after he married Horn-Garcia.

“He went from a loving father to not a loving father,” Russ Cook said. “We opened our house to him, and he distanced himself from his family immediately (after meeting Horn-Garcia).”
 
Garcia’s brother, Carlos, told The Bulletin he feels conflicted at the verdict. “I feel that, yes, he should be punished for his part in what happened — and he should have got him and her out of there — but I don’t feel he should have been found guilty of the same charges as her.”

Uh actually yeah he should. With family values like this, no wonder Dad was a weasel.
 
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@Satanica
Parents who starved their 5-year-old daughter to death have been sentenced to life in prison.

33-year-old Sacora Horn-Garcia and 35-year-old Estevan Garcia were found guilty of murder by abuse and criminal mistreatment in the 2016 death of Maliyha Hope Garcia.

They’ll be eligible for parole in 25 years.
Garcia expressed regret but stopped short of admitting intentionally starving his daughter. Horn-Garcia said she’s not a murderer but a person who made a terrible mistake by not taking the child to the hospital. She also blamed the media for making her look bad.
 
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