A California mother drunkenly crashed her car into a canal — and left her 4-year-old daughter in the backseat of the submerged vehicle as she went home to take a bath, prosecutors said.
Juliette Marie Acosta, 26, had a blood alcohol level nearly three times the legal limit when she allegedly crashed into an irrigation canal on March 8 near Hickman, a small town east of Modesto, according to the Stanislaus County District Attorney’s Office.
The allegedly intoxicated mom left her submerged car, where her daughter, Reagan Herrin, was trapped in her car seat. Acosta was “located taking a bath while her daughter remained in peril at the crash scene,” the DA’s office said in the Saturday press release.
Reagan’s uncle, who lives nearby, helped pull his niece from the Subaru when police arrived on the scene, officials told the Sacramento Bee. The tot was rushed to a local hospital, where she died the following day.
Acosta’s attorney Gil Somera denied that his client took a bath afterward.
“Timeline-wise, it’s almost impossible to have done both of those,” he insisted to the Independent. “Time-wise, you can’t go take a bath while your daughter’s drowning if it’s in her canal, not next to a home … logically, it just doesn’t make sense.”
Acosta was initially charged with driving under the influence, but prosecutors hit her with additional charges — including murder — on Friday.
She was detained at a San Francisco hotel after she tried to flee, and her father was also taken into custody for allegedly trying to help her escape, according to the Sacramento Bee.
“Any suggestion that my client was attempting to flee is completely false,” Somera said.
Acosta is being held without bail, the district attorney’s office said.
If convicted, she could face life in prison.
“It’s about whether it’s a manslaughter versus a murder,” Somera told the Independent. “And so I think the public always looks at this and says, ‘Well, you did or you didn’t do it.’
“Guilt is guilt, but it’s the degree of guilt, it’s the circumstances that center around with punishment is necessary, and right now everyone wants to circle around life in prison to a mother,” he added.
CREDIT:NY Post Patrick Reilly
