On Thursday the small white frame house had a hand-scrawled sign taped to the front door: “Will return soon.”
But Darlene Quintanilla won’t be coming back. The badly bruised and 89-pound body of the 65-year-old woman who lived in the rented home in the 1400 block of Valentia Street was found Sunday.
Police allege that in the last weeks of her life, her son Christopher Quintanilla, 43, and his girlfriend, Catherine Nieto, 42, had repeatedly beaten her, refused to get her medical assistance and neglected to feed her.
Christopher Quintanilla lived in the same home as his mother for years and for the past two years with his mother and girlfriend.
Neighbors who reported seeing the elderly woman during a Fourth of July block picnic said she appeared to look healthy, was using her walker and eating food. Others reported hearing shouting and screaming coming from the home weeks before her death.
“He was a lazy person and never wanted to work or seemed unmotivated to do anything,” landlord N.K. Sharma said Thursday of Christopher Quintanilla.
Sharma described Darlene as “a low-key person” and “not in the greatest of health.” He said the last time he saw her, she was in a wheelchair.
Nieto was “disrespectful” and an “angry person.” Sharma said. “I didn’t want to deal with her.”
On Wednesday, Christopher Quintanilla was charged with negligence resulting in serious bodily injury; Nieto was charged with negligence that was the cause of death for an at-risk adult.
Quintanilla has a criminal record that shows he spent two years in prison and has been arrested on counts of automobile theft, assault and disturbing the peace, according to Colorado Bureau of Investigation records.
Darlene Quintanilla had five children, according to her son LeRoy Quintanilla, who refused to comment on his mother’s death or talk about his brother Christopher. He would only say that his mother was “a nice and caring person.”
When police questioned Nieto, she told them that Christopher Quintanilla “had been beating his mother all week prior to her death.”
Quintanilla told police that he had been taking care of his mother since he was a teen and said he had “basically given up on her.”
When Quintanilla heard what he was being charged with, police said he told them, “I apologize for what I did to my mother.”
Annette Espinoza: 303-954-1655 or aespinoza@denverpost.com
