3-year-old dies in locked SUV with ‘passed out’ mom, CA officials say. Now, mom charged
A mother who once advocated for stricter DUI laws was charged in her toddler’s death after she was found “severely intoxicated” and “passed out” beside her dead daughter inside a locked SUV, California prosecutors say.
Sandra Hernandez-Cazares, 42, was charged with involuntary manslaughter and child neglect in the death of her 3-year-old daughter, Ily Ruiz, the Orange County District Attorney’s Office said in a Sept. 10 news release.
When Hernandez-Cazares’ son’s school called saying no one had picked him from kindergarten Friday, Sept. 6, family began searching for her and her daughter, prosecutors said.
They soon found Hernandez-Cazares and Ily both unconscious in a locked SUV as temperatures outside reached 104 degrees, Anaheim police said, McClatchy News reported.
Family broke the SUV’s window, prosecutors said. They pulled the girl from the vehicle, according to police.
Despite efforts to revive the girl, she was pronounced dead, according to prosecutors.
Doctors believe Ily “had been dead for several hours before she was discovered,” prosecutors said.
After getting a search warrant for the SUV, officers found “several empty alcohol bottles inside,” police said.
When Hernandez-Cazares arrived at a hospital, she had a blood alcohol content level of .30, nearly “four times the legal (driving) limit,” according to prosecutors.
Twelve years prior to the death of her daughter, an accused drunk driver killed her two sons as they slept “in a tent at a South Dakota campground during a family vacation,” prosecutors said.
Hernandez-Cazares went on to lobby for stronger penalties for DUI drivers in the North Dakota state legislature, prosecutors said.
“The unimaginable pain of having your 5-year-old and 9-year-old sons killed by a drunk driver is something from which you can never recover,” Orange County District Attorney Todd Spitzer said in the news release. “Anyone who has suffered such a devastating tragedy knows the ripple effects of grief may be able to be hidden, but the heartbreak of losing your children will never go away.”
Ily’s father, Juan Ruiz, shares that pain, KNBC reported.
“This is my third child to lose, so I am broken,” Ruiz told the outlet. “I’m devastated and I’m angry.”
Despite his pain, Ruiz showed sympathy toward Hernandez-Cazares.
“She’d never do this on purpose,” Ruiz told KNBC. “It doesn’t change the fact she did it. It doesn’t change the fact that because of her negligence … it happened, and now my daughter is dead due to the actions of her mother. She’s not a bad mom at all, she just needs help.”
A GoFundMe describes Ily as a “beautiful and innocent soul with a very loving and bubbly personality.”
“It’s still hard to wrap our minds around the thought (that) Ily is no longer with us,” the fundraising page says.
Hernandez-Cazares, who is being held on $150,000 bail, could get up to 12 years in prison if convicted as charged, prosecutors said.
This story was originally published September 11, 2024 at 11:08 AM with the headline "3-year-old dies in locked SUV with ‘passed out’ mom, CA officials say. Now, mom charged."
