A 27-year-old woman in Texas will spend several years behind bars for leaving a dead infant inside of a gas station toilet in Houston last year. Harris County District Judge Kristin M. Guiney on Monday ordered Diana Guadalupe Zavala Lopez to serve four years in a state correctional facility after she pleaded guilty to one count of tampering with evidence — human corpse as well as one count of tampering/fabricating physical evidence with the intent to impede an investigation, court records reviewed by Law&Crime show.

Guiney also credited Zavala Lopez with 489 days of time already served.

As Law&Crime previously reported, agents with U.S. Customs and Border Protection apprehended Zavala Lopez in August 2023 at a bus station in Brownsville, Texas, which is the largest city in the U.S. portion of the Lower Rio Grande Valley.

Criminal charges against a 30-year-old nurse in New York accused of “violently slamming” a newborn baby face-down into a bassinet in the neonatal intensive care unit have been dropped just hours before she was scheduled to go to trial on one count of endangering the welfare of a child.

Suffolk County District Court Judge Eric Sachs on Monday formally dismissed the misdemeanor charge against Amanda Burke, her attorney confirmed to Law&Crime.

The Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office had previously said that Burke was working at Good Samaritan Hospital’s neonatal ICU on Feb. 6, 2023, and was assigned to care for a 2-day-old baby named Nikko.

While the windows in the neonatal ICU are typically covered for privacy reasons, the covering on the bottom corner of one of the windows had come off, allowing someone outside of the unit to look in and see baby Nikko. The child’s father was recording a video of his son when the incident took place.

“Burke approached the newborn while he was lying in a bassinet, lifted him up, quickly flipped him over, and violently slammed him face down on the bassinet,” prosecutors wrote. “The infant’s father recorded a video of the incident on his cellular telephone through the nursery window. After viewing the recording, the infant’s mother confronted Burke.”

The child’s parents then showed the video of Burke slamming their child into the bassinet to other nurses and staff members at the hospital. Authorities say that the establishment took swift action, directing Burke to leave the hospital and terminating her employment within two hours of the alleged incident taking place.

Burke’s attorney, Robert C. Gottlieb, told Law&Crime that the dismissal of the charge was welcome, but came “a year too late.”

A 24-year-old father in Idaho will spend decades behind bars after he admitted to killing his newborn daughter, “violently” beating and shaking the infant to death in 2021. Kootenai County District Judge Barbara Duggan on Tuesday ordered Dyllan Dwight Towles to serve a sentence of 50 years in a state correctional facility for slaying the little girl, authorities announced.

Court records show that Towles last year pleaded guilty to one lesser count of second-degree murder in his daughter’s death. He will be eligible for parole after serving at least 25 years of his sentence.

According to a news release from the Kootenai County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office, Towles on Saturday, Sept. 18, 2021, called 911 and told the dispatcher his 2-month-old child was not breathing. Upon arriving at the scene, first responders found the child “laying face up and unresponsive on the floor.”

While attempting lifesaving measures, officers said they observed visible injuries on the child, which included” a large circular bruise on her cheek, a bruise on her right leg, and bite marks on her left forearm, left ankle, and below her knee.”

The victim was rushed to the hospital where she was pronounced dead.

In response to questions about the events leading up to him calling 911, Towles said on Thursday everything was normal. On Friday his daughter slept excessively and on Saturday morning everything seemed fine. But later on Saturday, the victim began “to look off to the side and not respond when he (Towles) snapped his fingers,” the release states.

“When asked about the observed injuries, Towles claimed that he bit the child, ‘shook’ her ‘pretty violently’ approximately 20 times, and ‘played with her legs’ in an attempt to gain a response from the child after she suddenly became unresponsive,” prosecutors wrote.

A 26-year-old mother in Pennsylvania has been arrested for allegedly killing her 3-month-old son, beating the child to death and then blaming the fatal injuries on her 3-year-old daughter, saying the toddler was jealous of the newborn.

Alisha Parker was taken into custody on Sunday and charged with one count of criminal homicide and one count of endangering the welfare of a child, authorities announced.

According to a press release from the Allegheny County Police Department, officers with Duquesne Police responded to a home at about 1:57 a.m. on Sunday in the 300 block of Hemlock Alley in regards to a report about an unresponsive male infant. Upon arriving at the scene, first responders said they immediately began to perform CPR on the victim and rushed him to a hospital, where he died.

Parker reportedly told police her toddler daughter fatally injured the infant, imploring authorities to “evaluate” her.

“If there’s anything that happened out of the ordinary, my 3-year-old child did it and ya’ll need to do something about that,” she told detectives, according to a probable cause affidavit obtained by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. “She’s the last person to see him alive and she’s been doing little jealousy, little things — evaluate that girl.”

According to the affidavit, Parker and her two kids had recently moved in with Parker’s cousin and the cousin’s 18-month-old child before the victim’s death.

The cousin reportedly told police that she left the house to go to work at about 5 that evening and got home at about 1 the following morning, having called Parker several times to ask her to check on her 18-month-old. The cousin said at about 11:20 p.m., she called Parker and heard the victim crying in the background.

A mother and father in Indiana have been arrested for allegedly killing their 1-month-old daughter, violently beating and shaking the newborn and then not seeking medical attention for nearly a week as the victim slowly died in the home.

Gerard Dante Coger, 21, and Janaya Kimberly Hobson, 19, were taken into custody last week and charged with a spate of felonies, including two counts each of neglect of a dependent resulting in death, three counts of neglect of a dependent resulting in serious bodily injury, and depriving a dependent of necessary support in the slaying of Royal Coger, court records reviewed by Law&Crime show.

Additionally, Coger is facing one count of murder and one count of aggravated battery in his son’s horrific death.

According to a probable cause affidavit obtained by the Chicago Tribune, the couple showed up at Methodist Hospital’s Northlake campus on Dec. 15 carrying young Royal who “appeared to have been suffering from abusive head trauma.” The couple had walked about a mile with the baby to arrive at the facility.

Unfortunately, the child succumbed to her injuries and was pronounced dead on Dec. 18.

A caseworker with the Indiana Department of Child Services then reportedly contacted the Gary, Indiana Police Department to report the child’s suspicious injuries.

The doctor who first spoke with Coger and Hobson on Dec. 15 and explained that the newborn was likely going to die because she’d been violently shaken, said the couple responded by staring back at her “like a deer in headlights,” per the Tribune. As the conversation continued, the doctor noted it was Coger who “did most of the talking” and described Hobson as appearing “flat.” She said “neither were angry” and both denied ever shaking Royal.