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An Alamo man pleaded guilty to the death of his girlfriend’s 18-month-old toddler who he babysat while she was at work.
The man also refused to take the child to the hospital despite the child “vomiting blood,” Hidalgo County Chief Assistant Criminal District Attorney of Major Crimes Hope Palacios, said.
Hector Jose Sanchez, 28, pleaded guilty to injury to a child by omission and was sentenced to 40 years in prison. Sanchez will have to serve half his sentence before he’s eligible for parole, Palacios stated.
Sanchez’s girlfriend, Edinburg resident Crystal Angeles Pelayo, who was born in 1999, also pleaded guilty to the same charge and received a 25-year prison sentence.
The child died in February 2020 before the COVID-19 pandemic which caused the case to be pushed back like most court cases.
Palacios said the two were in a romantic relationship for a couple of months and Pelayo would frequently leave her son with Sanchez while she was at work.
Sanchez would sometimes send pictures of injuries the child would sustain while under his care.
“On numerous occasions there were text messages where we had photographs of injuries to the child with Mr. Sanchez explaining that the child had fallen or maybe had been hurt by the other kids,” Palacios said.
Pelayo would acknowledge that the “superficial” injuries had occurred and at one point she took her son to a children’s hospital in Edinburg.
It was due to that incident that Child Protective Services was contacted, Palacios said.
CPS began to investigate and were about to close the case when a CPS worker saw additional injuries to the child who was subsequently sent to the Valley Baptist Medical Center in Harlingen for an evaluation.
The forensic nurse that evaluated the toddler said the injuries could be consistent with what was described, but the timing was off based on her observation.
The CPS case remained open.
Then, on Feb. 3, 2020, Pelayo left her son once again with Sanchez so she could dry some laundry at a nearby laundromat.
Sanchez, again, sent Pelayo another message stating that her son had fallen on a toy and sent a picture of the boy’s abdomen.
“[He] sent her a voice message or voice memo where he kind of indicated that the child was breathing funny,” Palacios said.
When Pelayo returned home, Sanchez left to go play basketball.
The couple then exchange more text messages where Pelayo says that her son doesn’t seem to be OK and was vomiting blood, stating she wants to take him to the hospital, Palacios said.
Sanchez indicated that she shouldn’t take him to the hospital because things would get worse with the CPS investigation.
He then returned home and the couple put the child to sleep on the floor. Pelayo claimed she woke up later, around 3 or 4 a.m., to look after her son and went back to bed.
The two then woke up around 8:30 a.m. to find her son unresponsive and then called 911.
Palacios said an autopsy conducted on the child revealed that there was some blunt force trauma to his abdomen that wasn’t consistent with the fall that Sanchez described.
They also found the child to have an older skull fracture.
