Police say mother, 14, smothered newborn because she was scared

A 14-year-old Federal Way girl told police she smothered her minutes-old daughter last week because she was scared and didn't want her mother to find the infant, according to prosecution documents in the case.

After giving birth to the girl in her mother's bedroom, the teen was worried that the baby would cry, so she put a blanket over the infant and pressed her arm against the infant's face for several seconds until the baby stopped moving, according to probable-cause documents released Monday.

A King County juvenile-court judge Monday ordered the eighth-grader held in detention pending charging. Second-degree-murder charges are expected by Wednesday, according to Dan Donohoe, spokesman for the King County Prosecutor's Office. If convicted, the girl could be held in a state juvenile facility until she turns 21.

Meanwhile, the baby's 20-year-old father, Leonel Guzman-Jacobo, was ordered held in the King County Jail on $100,000 bail while awaiting child-rape charges, expected today, Donohoe said.

Court documents allege Guzman-Jacobo had been having sex with the girl at least once a week for about seven months, since she was 13.

The girl was escorted into Judge Philip Hubbard's courtroom at the King County Youth Service Center in Seattle on Monday afternoon, where she met her tearful mother and a court-appointed attorney. The girl didn't speak during the brief hearing.

Outside the courtroom, the girl's mother declined to discuss the situation in detail. But she said her daughter is "doing fine" considering the circumstances.

According to the prosecutors' documents, the girl gave birth on the morning of April 9, while her mother was away, and immediately began to bleed profusely.

When her mother came home and discovered large amounts of blood throughout the apartment, the teen locked herself in her mother's bedroom and covered the newborn girl with a blanket to hide her. That's when the teen pressed against the baby's face until she stopped moving, the 14-year-old told police.

The teen's mother eventually took her to the hospital, thinking she was having a miscarriage. After they left, a family friend found the dead baby under the blanket and called 911.

The teen's mother and other relatives told police they hadn't known the girl was pregnant, though they had noticed a "bump," the documents said. The mother told police she made her daughter take a pregnancy test in January, after she missed some periods, but it was negative.

Prosecutors allege Guzman-Jacobo had been dating the girl for about a year with the blessing of the teen's mother. They began having sex in September at friends' homes, prosecutors say.

Guzman-Jacobo told police he also was unaware the girl was pregnant but would have been willing to take care of their child.

Ian Ith: 206-464-2109 or iith@seattletimes.com