Jose Sierra (Ellis County District Attorney’s Office)
A 38-year-old man in Texas will likely spend the rest of his life locked up for killing his infant daughter nearly two years ago, regularly beating the 7-month-old so severely that he regularly broke her legs, leaving the child in a state where she “could no longer fight and heal from these injuries.”
District Court Judge Cindy Ermatinger on Thursday handed down the maximum sentence, ordering Jose Sierra to serve a sentence of life in prison with the possibility for parole in the horrific slaying of young Valeria Sierra, authorities announced.
Judge Ermatinger handed down the sentence after a jury found Sierra guilty on one count of injury to a child resulting in serious bodily injury or death.
According to a press release from the Ellis County District Attorney’s Office, Sierra pulled up in front of the Ellis County Jail in Waxahachie on Dec. 28, 2021, and flagged down a pair of maintenance workers. He told the workers that his baby was unconscious, and one of them called 911 to report the problem.
Emergency medical personnel arrived less than a minute later, with paramedics saying the child was “unresponsive, limp and cold to the touch,” the release states. The child — Valeria — was rushed to Baylor Scott and White Medical Center in Waxahachie by ambulance. Despite life-saving efforts in the ambulance, paramedics could never get a cardiac rhythm, and the child died.
Personnel in the emergency room said that after examining the infant, they immediately grew suspicious of her condition. Valencia had suffered bruising throughout her body and had multiple broken bones in various stages of healing — a telltale sign of ongoing physical abuse.
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“An autopsy performed at the Southwestern Institute of Forensic Sciences in Dallas revealed that Valeria had two healing broken clavicles, a healing fracture to the left femur, healing fractures to the left proximal tibia, and a re-fracture to a healing break of the left distal fibula,” prosecutors wrote in the release. “The child also had numerous bruises and hemorrhages to her head, face, neck, chin, shoulder, torso, right hand, and left leg.
Forensic Pathologist Dr. Chester Gwin, who performed the autopsy, told authorities that Valeria’s body simply “could no longer fight and heal from these injuries.”
In his initial statements to police, prosecutors said that Sierra tried to cast blame on the child’s mother, the child’s pediatrician, Valeria’s nieces and nephews, and even on Valeria. However, investigators said that Sierra’s purported explanations for his daughter’s injuries were undercut by the medical evidence, which showed that Valencia’s injuries required a greater level of force to be inflicted than any of his stories could explain.
Further implicating Sierra, the medical evidence showed that the abuse on Valencia began just as the infant’s mother returned to work and left Sierra as Valencia’s sole caregiver.
“The injuries this baby endured during her short life were despicable,” District Attorney Ann Montgomery said in a statement. “The person who should have protected Valeria was, in fact, the perpetrator. Once again, an Ellis County jury showed that if you commit a crime and intentionally or knowingly hurt a child, there will be severe consequences.”
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