Inset: Gabriela Elyzabeth Deras (Houston Police Department). Background: Car where Deras’ baby found dead (KRIV/YouTube)
A Texas mother is behind bars nearly a year after she allegedly left behind her 11-week-old baby boy in her car for almost three hours with temperatures outside in the mid-90s.
Gabriela Elyzabeth Deras, 22, is charged with murder in the death of her son Ethan Rosa Deras, Houston police said in a press release. According to a probable cause arrest affidavit, Deras took Ethan and her 3-year-old son, identified as N.V., to her appointment at a mental health clinic around noon on Aug. 8, 2023. When she exited her car, Deras only took the older son inside the clinic. The temperature was about 95 degrees with a heat index of about 100 degrees, cops say.
After about three hours she returned to the car to find the baby foaming at the mouth and not breathing, the affidavit said. She rushed him inside for help and first responders came to the scene. Paramedics rushed him to the hospital where doctors pronounced Ethan dead. He reportedly had a temperature of 108 degrees.
In an interview with cops, Deras said she couldn’t remember “too much stuff.” Deras then gave officers conflicting information, from giving different times of when she arrived at the clinic to first saying she took Ethan out of the car, but then admitting that she never removed him, investigators wrote.
“She said that N.V. was with her and she did not know where the complainant was at that point,” investigators wrote.
When they asked Deras whether Ethan was in the car for the entire three hours, she reportedly said “I think so.”
“She then said her car was turned on the entire time that she was inside of the Harris Center,” the affidavit said. “She also said the air condition was left on level three with the windows up while the vehicle was running.”
But when she returned the car, it wasn’t running, according to cops. She opened the car and her older son got into the back and said “the baby,” the affidavit said. Ethan appeared to be dead.
Deras first said she left the baby by accident but also stated she thought he was at home with his grandmother, police said. She was “inconsistent as she went back and forth with different responses to questions she was already asked,” investigators said. She later allegedly admitted that the car was not running when she left the car.
Detectives talked to Deras’ mother who told them she offered to watch the kids, but her daughter declined.
An autopsy determined Ethan died of hyperthermia with the manner of death homicide. Investigators concluded that a “reasonable person would have believed that leaving a child, unattended in a hot car, would place the complainant in imminent danger of death and bodily injury,” the affidavit said.
Cops arrested Deras on Friday and took her to the Harris County Jail where she remains on a $50,000 bond. She has a court date scheduled for Oct. 16.
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