All of those court hearings I had to come to, what does that do to a dad?" he asked. "I wish she had gotten this over with sooner. While he is grateful the case did not advance to trial, Casey Baird believes the woman he viewed as his "other daughter" isn't truly sorry for what she did. "Forty-six times she stabbed her, nonstop, very fast, very violent."Īfter going through an emotional preliminary hearing earlier in the year, Mendoza pleaded guilty against her attorney's advice last month. More than a year after the killing, Casey Baird said the violence of his daughter’s death still haunts him. "That bothers me because we took her in and treated her like a family member." "She's never looked at me, I've never seen her cry or seem sad or anything," Gunn said. At moments her shoulders would shake, as if she was weeping, but Gunn questioned that emotion Tuesday. "We have love for her, which is why it's so confusing that she did this to our whole family," said Liana Anderson, Baird's grandmother.Īs she sat shackled and listening to the remarks, Mendoza hung her head low to the table and hid her face in her long dark hair. "I should have seen that as the main sign that she was capable of doing much worse."Īs they asked the judge for a maximum prison sentence, family members said they had come to care for Mendoza as one of their own, despite their reservations about her. "That's one thing I really, really regret," Gunn said. She now regrets helping the two cover up the fact that it was Mendoza who had damaged Baird's tooth, believing the two had resolved the issues between them. They would fight, Gunn recalled Tuesday, but it never seemed to be anything more than "girls fighting" and was always followed by the two making up. The two women had lived with Baird's mother, Dana Gunn. "You need to report this stuff - we all do." "It was a look that I wish I had done something about," Hansen recalled. However, Hansen said she noticed a telling look that passed between Mendoza and Baird when she asked Baird about a tooth that had been suspiciously chipped a few months earlier. She recalled hugging an excited Mendoza, who had become like family, as she congratulated her on her new job. Mendoza, 23, was sentenced Tuesday to 16 years to life in prison.īaird's family members described the women as volatile yet inseparable Tuesday as they pleaded with other families to be aware of the dangers of domestic violence.īaird's aunt, Holly Hansen, had visited with the two women just days before the Oct. That's when Mendoza told police she "lost it," pulling a knife from her pocket and stabbing Baird in the face, neck and chest as she sat in the passenger seat. The two women had been visiting friends when they got into an argument on the drive home. Mendoza pleaded guilty to murder, a first-degree felony, for stabbing her girlfriend, 21-year-old Tawnee Marie Baird, 46 times as they drove down the freeway. "There's no excuse for what I did, that's the main reason I pleaded guilty," Victoria Mendoza told the judge. OGDEN - A Holladay woman raised no defense yet offered no apology Tuesday as she was sentenced to up to life in prison for brutally stabbing her girlfriend to death.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |