A woman who left her dead baby in a gas station toilet has been sentenced to four years in prison.
Mexican immigrant Diana Guadalupe Zavala Lopez has pleaded guilty to charges of tampering with evidence, Law & Crime reports.
In the early hours of April 2, 2023, surveillance footage showed her entering a Shell gas station in Houston to use the restroom.
Investigators said a customer later discovered the dead child and raised the alarm.
“No one else was in that bathroom. [the newborn] She wasn’t there when she came in earlier,” said HPD Homicide Detective Calab Bowling. “It looks like she gave birth in the bathroom.”
The video shows Zavala-Lopez entering the gas station for about 15 minutes, then exiting and driving away in a white Cadillac.
Mexican immigrant Diana Guadalupe Zavala Lopez admitted to abandoning her baby after giving birth in a gas station bathroom.
In the early hours of April 2, 2023, a baby was found dead in the bathroom of a Shell gas station in Houston.
Zavala Lopez pleads guilty to evidence tampering charge and sentenced to four years in prison
A woman who went to the bathroom later reported finding the baby around 4:25 a.m.
Police did not release the baby’s name or cause of death, but said she appeared to have been dead for about an hour before she was found.
Zavala Lopez, 26, was arrested at a bus stop in Brownsville, Texas, in August 2023.
CBP officials said she was overstaying her visitor visa and initially described her as a murder suspect trying to flee to Mexico, but no murder charges were filed.
The defendant pleaded guilty to one count of tampering with evidence or human remains and one count of tampering with/fabricating physical evidence with intent to obstruct an investigation.
Harris County District Judge Christine M. Guiney sentenced her to four years in a state correctional facility, with 489 days already served.