News
John Castro trial now with jury
Monday, November 17th 2014, 5:09 PM ChST
Updated:

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Guam - It's now up to the jury to decide whether John Castro killed his girlfriend's toddler back in January of this year, as closing arguments were presented on Monday.
According to prosecutor Matthew Heibel, the defendant is out of excuses. "With rolling over being out, with CPR not being a viable excuse, with any sort of accident out the window he is turned to a desperate and last line of defense which is blaming the mother. What you would have to believe is that Suzana Lotino sometime when Mr. Castro was sleeping, punched her biological daughter in the abdomen so hard enough to rupture her small intestine," he stated.
Castro is charged with aggravated murder, aggravated assault, and child abuse for the death of 23-month-old Alzana Lotino. According to the medical examiner, the child's injuries were consistent of a homicide, ruling the cause of death a result of blunt force trauma to the abdomen which was inflicted by a single blow to the stomach with a closed fist.
The night before the toddler's death, Castro was her babysitter while her mother, Suzana Lotino worked the graveyard shift at Kmart.
Although the defendant took the stand and testified he had never hurt the child but instead suspected abuse was coming from elsewhere, Heibel discredits any of Castro's testimony, saying, "We have a man taking the witness stand trying to blame the only other person who is even in the remote field of possibilities - his girlfriend Suzana. And what did you hear him say? Well one that he noticed some suspicious injuries, some sort of long scratch and bruised toenails. He never said anything about it, he never told anybody about it. He has no outside evidence to support it and this was the very first time he said anything to anyone."
But why point fingers at the child's mother? Public defender Suresh Sampath outlines the timeline of events leading to the toddler's death, saying, "The one single strike with a closed fist by a man or by a woman was inflicted four to twenty four hours prior to the girl's death. Four hours puts us at 7:30 that's the latest it could've occurred that morning January 11th 2014. However the earliest time would've been 11:30 the previous day."
Because the child ate dinner and slept through the night Castro babysat her, the injuries could not have been inflicted during his time with her. "Suzana Lotino was home at the time that the time the death inducing blow was inflicted," Sampath concluded.
It's now up to the jury to decide as they head into deliberations earlier this afternoon.
