Zoey Espinoza’s last conscious moments ticked away, blow after blow. Her mother, Tiffany Moreno, was enraged and struck her 2 1/2-year-old child continuously for 10 minutes in July 2005.
Then Moreno left her unconscious toddler alone in a car, according to testimony. Zoey later died in a hospital.
Shortly before she was sentenced Friday to 32 years in prison, Moreno, 21, admitted she killed her daughter and said only she was to blame.
“I wasn’t ready to be a mom. I thought I was,” Moreno said through her tears. “I wanted to be a mother, but I (also) wanted to be a teenager. I tried to be a mother but I couldn’t. I should have said something but I couldn’t.”
Denver District Judge Martin Egelhoff handed Moreno the maximum sentence for child abuse resulting in death.
Moreno was charged with first-degree murder but was allowed to plead to the child-abuse charge because prosecutors worried a jury might believe Moreno’s boyfriend was involved in the beating, prosecutor Kerri Lombardi said.
“This child was totally vulnerable and defenseless,” Egelhoff said Friday. “This child wasn’t just slapped, she was beaten about the head and the body for 10 minutes.”
Egelhoff noted that Moreno didn’t have custody of the child and was only to be with her under strict supervision.
That wasn’t the case on July 2, 2005. Moreno took the child out for a drive without proper supervision. Moreno told investigators different versions about what happened before finally admitting she had become enraged at the little girl for rolling the car windows up and down.
Defense attorneys characterized Moreno as a battered woman who had been beaten by Zoey’s father, Justice Espinoza, who had had several run-ins with the law. He was brought into the courtroom Friday in shackles.
After Moreno was beaten by Espinoza, she required two surgeries and a plate was used to rebuild her face, said Stephanie Moreno, Tiffany’s mother.
Spencer Friedman, a psychologist, testified that Moreno was a battered woman who was overwhelmed by parenthood. “She couldn’t acknowledge, ‘I can’t handle this child,”‘ he said.
Prosecutor Lombardi argued that Moreno didn’t have any mental health issues and knew she wasn’t to be around her child without supervision.
“She was not to be taking care of this child,” Lombardi said. “She took the child knowing she was not fit.”
Staff writer Howard Pankratz can be reached at 303-954-1939 or hpankratz@denverpost.com.
