Las Cruces community to remember Baby Brianna on 16th birthday
The Las Cruces community will gather to remember the life of Baby Brianna on what would have been her 16th birthday.
Members of the public will also offer a moment of silence for the late infant Mattie Minnick, allegedly shaken to death by her parents earlier this year.
Police charged Minnick’s 19-year-old parents – Caricia Lorena Ceballos and Marcus Alton Minnick – for the crime. Neither have yet posted bond, a spokesman for the Third Judicial District Attorney’s office confirmed.
Baby Brianna’s abuse case is believed to be one of the most serious the state of New Mexico has ever seen. Brianna Lopez was brutally raped and killed by members of her family in 2002, when she was only five months old.
Brianna’s mother, Stephanie Lopez, was convicted in 2003, but released from prison in 2016 after serving only 13 years of her 27-year prison sentence.
House Bill 100 passed in the House last week, but is now stalled in the Senate, according to KOB. If passed, the bill would give abusers of New Mexico’s most severe child abuse life in prison, regardless of the age of the child.
“I don’t have an explanation as to why this bill has not received a hearing,” state Rep. Sarah Maestas Barnes, R-Albuquerque, told KOB.
Under current law, if a person commits intentional child abuse resulting in death and that child is 11 years old or younger they are automatically sentenced to a life sentence which is 30 years, before they’re eligible for parole, according to KVIA’s previous reporting. If the child is over the age 11, the maximum sentence is 18 years.
