SALTILLO.- Sergio Mitre, a former Mexican baseball player who played for the New York Yankees and the Chicago Cubs in the Major Leagues, was sentenced this Thursday to 50 years in prison for the femicide of Inés, a 10-year-old baby months.
The minor was the daughter of the ballplayer's former sentimental partner, named Liliana, who has been accused and acquitted of filicide.
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Despite the inconsistencies in the investigation of the case, Miter's violent record against other women, such as his mother, sisters and at least five ex-partners, is what led him to be sentenced, according to information from Proceso.
The lawyers who dealt with the case assure that the conditions of family violence, Inés's absent father and Liliana's youth –she was 17 when she became a mother and 19 when she met the player who was 39– were a perfect breeding ground for abuse.
THE FEMINICIDE OF INÉS
The first testimonies of Liliana and Miter about the death of the little girl, which occurred on July 12, 2020, indicate that the mother was at the home of the former baseball player, in the Saltillo city.
They reported that the baby had been sick since the day before, that she was crying a lot and vomiting. Given the obvious deterioration of the already unconscious girl, both asked for help from the neighbor downstairs – who rented an apartment to the player – and she took them to the Red Cross in her car, where Inés suffered a cardiorespiratory arrest.
Inés was taken by ambulance to the Children's Hospital, where she died 20 minutes later.
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"Abused child syndrome", diagnosed the doctors who treated her, Inés's body had bruises of different colors, known as "raccoon eyes", and a series of features for which they reported the case to the Public Ministry .
Liliana and Miter were taken before the state prosecutor's office, where they were separated for questioning.
The result of the autopsy performed by Dr. Brisa Alcázar was that the girl died as a result of "an accident," according to what was reported to Alejandro Martínez, Liliana's father.
Lawyer Karla Ávila, Liliana's defense attorney, assured that the minor's mother was tortured to make her incriminate Mitre. The woman's screams alerted her relatives, who managed to get her released, but in August 2020 she was reapprehended and linked to a trial for filicide.
The baseball player, for his part, was detained for 48 hours, accused of possession of narcotics that, according to his lawyer Pablo Mejía, the police planted on him. When he was released, some policemen were already waiting for Miter with an arrest warrant for femicide and improper rape. Since then he has been in the Saltillo Social Readaptation Center (Cereso).
The defenses of Liliana and Miter agree that the necropsy of the minor was poorly done, as well as the expert reports. They accused that the crime scene – the player's apartment – was contaminated by the policemen themselves, who even stole objects.
In the absence of due diligence from the Prosecutor's Office, Karla Ávila managed to get criminologist Valeria Baltazar, forensic psychologist Aurelio Coronado and criminal profiler Brent Turvey to join her free of charge to help her defend the girl's mother .
2019 BACKGROUND
Valeria Baltazar delved into Mitre's past, until she found a video from September 2019, where the former baseball player is seen running naked from a hotel room in the capital of Coahuila , chasing a woman, also without clothes, whom he dragged back into the room in front of the security personnel of the place.
For this fact, the man was arrested and spent four days in jail for the crime of family violence. The case ended in a conditional suspension since the attacker acknowledged his responsibility and promised to comply with a series of reparation and protection measures for the victim, however, the woman reports that the former player did not finish complying with said reparation .
The criminologist assures that they collected data from other victims who were Sergio's partners, as well as from some of his friends, who knew about Jazmín and said that "he was down" that he would have hit her, but that, well, that was between them, that they were his compas and that he did nothing to them".
Baltazar assures that the death of Inés is derived from the impunity stemming from this case, since the investigation file indicates that Jazmín was threatened with a knife by Sergio, for which reason he should have been prosecuted for attempted femicide. "You don't get out with that, you stay in jail," he insisted.
The woman in the video was forced to have an abortion, was beaten and strangled, and on the day of the events in the hotel she was face down naked and was forced to have sexual relations.
BACKGROUND WHEN HE PLAYED IN THE MLB
Liliana's defense in the filicide trial also obtained the statement of a woman named Tonya, ex-wife of Mitre, who in 2017 denounced the player before the Court in California and asked for a restraining order to protect her and her children.
The complaint indicates that since 2006, when the woman was pregnant, she was the victim of verbal violence, shoving and hitting by Mitre. In one of those episodes she lost a baby when she was nine weeks pregnant.
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On another occasion, the baseball player beat one of his two dogs to death, which he did in front of Tonya and her two children, minors who were also violated by their father.
On one occasion, he picked up the eldest by the hair and dragged him down the stairs, facts that were witnessed by the mother and one of Mitre's two sisters, whom he also hit when the couple lived with them in a house in Chula Vista, California.
After another incident of violence, Tonya picked up her children at school and did not return to the house where she lived with Miter and that that same day (in 2016) she called the San Diego police to raise, for the first time , a report of domestic violence.
These events occurred when Miter was an active player with the Florida Marlins and New York Yankees. In 2017 he reached the Mexican Baseball League with the Toros de Tijuana, and later joined the ranks of the Saraperos de Saltillo.
LILIANA'S VERSION BEFORE MITRE'S VIOLENT RECORD
The testimony of another woman raped by Sergio in Torreón helped Ávila and Baltazar to get Liliana to stop covering up for the former baseball player.
When undergoing a psychological examination, Inés's mother narrated that days before the death of the baby, both were beaten and violated by Mitre.
On July 8, Liliana left Inés alone with Sergio and when she returned, the girl had a scratch on her nose. The next day she woke up with black (raccoon) eyes, indicating that she received a blow. Liliana told her relatives that the girl had fallen.
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She explained that Miter also pressured her to buy abortion pills. Since she wanted to keep the baby, the man pushed her, hit her and Inés.
On July 11, Liliana said, four youth players from the Saraperos went to the Miter department to prepare aguachiles to sell due to the suspension of the season due to the covid-19 pandemic.
That morning, Inés cried while she washed the dishes; Sergio was outside with his friends cooking the aguachiles but when he entered the apartment, he took Inés by her arm and carried her up the stairs to a loft where her bedroom is.
Liliana says that when she was running upstairs for her daughter, she heard "a thud" and saw her daughter crying worse than before, lying on the wooden floor.
One of Sergio's classmates, who did not go out to sell the aguachiles like Miter and the others, would have seen the moment when Inés began to vomit. Liliana went to her mother's house and together they took the girl to a doctor in a generic pharmacy, where she, without checking her thoroughly, prescribed a medication as if she had a stomach infection. The girl did not stop asking for water or vomiting.
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The mother returned to Sergio's apartment, who upon arrival grabbed Inés from her and threatened her not to return her daughter until she got the abortion pills. When she returned with them, Sergio put two in her mouth and violently threw the girl at her. Inés was lying on a mat on the floor already feeling very bad.
Liliana began the abortion process and lay down next to her daughter who kept asking her for water, who, just as she drank it, vomited it up.
Since she refused to have sexual relations with Sergio, she says that he did not let her lie down in bed and spent the night on the floor, next to his daughter.
The next day Inés was already faint. Her mother gave her a bath, but the baby was no longer responding, so Sergio started giving her artificial respiration. That's when they asked the neighbor for help to take them to the Red Cross.
MITRE'S DEFENSE
Miter's lawyer accuses that the Prosecutor's Office put together the case without evidence and fabricating evidence with the help of Dr. Alcázar, whom he pointed out as having no experience as a forensic specialist.
The cause of death of Inés is uncertain and neither the first nor the second autopsy makes it clear what happened, only that the girl received a very strong blow, they do not know where or who gave it to her, and as a result she had a hypovolemic shock, that is, fluid loss so severe that it led to death. It is not known if she was due to dehydration or bleeding.
The second autopsy revealed a fracture at the base of the skull and several blows along Inés's spine, but ruled out the second crime, as it proved that Inés was not sexually assaulted.
Mejía assures that the Public Ministry has made "a pig" with the investigation, with the aim of showing "as a trophy" the conviction of an athlete who is a public figure.
Karla Ávila, Liliana's public defender, believes that these types of cases are not reviewed from the perspective of gender and childhood, nor the vulnerabilities, context and background of those involved. "Inés was a victim of the violence that Sergio Miter also exerted on her ex-partner," she says.
The baseball player's defense assures that the girl cried even when Sergio was not in the apartment, for which reason she points to Liliana for the mistreatment but that she changed her version to avoid a conviction.
(djh)
