Man Gets 25-Years-to-Life Sentence for Killing 2-Year-Old Son

RIVERSIDE - A Moreno Valley man who fatally beat his 2-year-old son during a weekend custody visit that the child's mother tried to prevent was sentenced today to 25 years to life in prison.

A Riverside jury deliberated just shy of three hours before convicting 28-year-old Alexandro Alfonso Baeza of second-degree murder and assault on a child resulting in great bodily injury on Sept. 1.

Baeza inflicted severe head trauma on his son, Isaac Gallegos, while the toddler was in his care in April 2010.

''Alex Baeza abused and killed my nephew,'' Jessica Gallegos told Riverside County Superior Court Judge Mark Johnson during the sentencing hearing at the Riverside Hall of Justice.

''I feel he deserves much worse than prison,'' she said. ''But I know he will face the ultimate punishment when his time comes.''

Baeza wept when the family played a 10-minute DVD for the judge, showing images of Isaac growing up, including a few snapshots of him and his father.

Johnson handed down the maximum punishment for the child assault charge, which carried the stiffer penalty and thus superseded the second-degree murder conviction.

Deputy District Attorney Burke Strunsky cited the testimony of three medical experts in comparing the injuries suffered by Isaac to the type produced by the ''force of an auto crash.''

''Isaac died at the hands of his father,'' the prosecutor said during the trial. ''Alex Baeza's selfish rage inflicted incredible harm on this 2-year- old boy. How could a father do that?''

Defense attorney Darryl Exum argued that the child's death was accidental and disputed whether the fatal injury happened while he was in his father's care.

On April 10, 2010, the youngster was with Baeza for a daylong custody visit when he suffered a head injury that resulted in hemorrhaging, according to Strunsky.

The child lingered on life support at Loma Linda University Medical Center for three days before succumbing to his injuries.

Doctors concluded that violent shaking precipitated his condition, according to Strunsky.

In videotaped interviews with sheriff's detectives, Baeza offered three different scenarios, including one in which he walked out of the room and the tot tumbled off a bed, and another in which he accidentally dropped the boy while changing his diapers.

According to the prosecutor, Baeza was tired of paying child support. The sometime methamphetamine user's ex-girlfriend, Andrea Gallegos, did everything in her means to protect their son, documenting bruises that appeared following each custody visit with the defendant, according to Strunsky.

The Fontana woman took her concerns to a San Bernardino County family court judge, John Pacheco, requesting that he deny further unsupervised visits between Baeza and Isaac, but she was accused of making up the allegations in order to gain exclusive custody rights.

According to family members, during a court hearing only weeks before Isaac died, the judge warned that he would award full custody to Baeza if Gallegos continued to attempt to prove that the defendant was abusing the boy.