A woman who left her dead baby in a gas station restroom has been sentenced to four years in jail.
Mexican migrant Diana Guadalupe Zavala Lopez pleaded guilty to tampering with evidence charges, Law & Crime reports.
She was seen on surveillance footage entering a Shell gas station in Houston to use the bathroom in the early hours of April 2, 2023.
A customer then discovered the dead child and raised the alarm, according to investigators.
‘No one else went inside that bathroom, and [the newborn] was not there when she walked in before,’ HPD Homicide Detective Calab Bowling said. ‘It appears that she gave birth in the restroom.’
Footage shows Zavala Lopez entering the gas station for around 15 minutes before leaving and driving off in a white Cadillac.
Mexican migrant Diana Guadalupe Zavala Lopez admitted abandoning her baby after she gave birth in a gas station restroom
Her baby was found dead in the bathroom of a Shell gas station in Houston to use the bathroom in the early hours of April 2, 2023
Zavala Lopez pleaded guilty to tampering with evidence charges and was sentenced to four years in jail
A woman who used the restroom after her reported finding the baby at around at around 4.25am.
Police have not released the infant’s name or her cause of death, but said she appeared to have been dead for around an hour before she was discovered.
Zavala Lopez, 26, was apprehended in August 2023 at a bus station in Brownsville, Texas.
CBP officers said she had overstayed on a visitor’s visa and initially described her as a homicide suspect attempting to flee to Mexico, however no homicide charges were filed.
The accused 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.
Harris County District Judge Kristin M. Guiney sentenced her to four years in a state correctional facility, noting she had 489 days of time already served.
