The story of Neveah Gallegos, 3 years old when she died on Sept. 21, 2007, can be tracked by the hands that touched her life, prosecutors told jurors Thursday during impassioned opening arguments in the trial of her accused killer.
The skilled hands of a doctor delivered Neveah. The loving hands of her maternal grandmother and aunts cared for her after her mother all but abandoned her. Then there are the hands of 27-year-old Angel Ray Montoya, who prosecutors say strangled the girl and concealed her body under a pile of trash in a Denver gulch.
Montoya, who was dating Neveah’s teenage mother, had been left to babysit the child the day she died, and has been charged with first-degree murder in her death. The pair staged an elaborate cover-up that sparked a days-long hunt for the child throughout Denver.
“His hands squeezed the last breath out of her tiny little body,” said Chief Deputy District Attorney Michelle Amico. “And once she was dead, he used his hands to … (dispose) of her as if she was worth nothing more than a piece of trash.”
It’s the second go-round of a Denver District Court trial that’s promised to be lengthy. Neveah’s mother, Miriam Gallegos, in August prompted a mistrial when she testified that Montoya had previously committed a sex offense, a bit of his criminal history the court had warned her was too prejudicial for jurors to hear.
Public defender Sarah Welton-Mitchell said there’s no proof that Montoya abused the child and criticized the prosecution for seeking the opinion of an out-of-town expert when Denver’s medical examiner could not definitively cite Neveah’s cause of death.
“In the days before Neveah died, she was feverish. She was lethargic. She had no appetite,” Welton-Mitchell said. “When a 3-year-old dies, it is a tragedy. But don’t forget it’s also a tragedy when an innocent man is accused of a horrific crime.”
Key to the prosecution’s case will be the testimony of Miriam Gallegos, who said she lied to police about a fake kidnapping while Montoya hid her daughter’s body. She is serving 12 years in prison after she pleaded guilty to negligent child abuse resulting in death.
