illegal alien gets 17 years for, stabbing, suffocating, and throwing her anchor baby in the garbage

STAMFORD -- A South End mother who worked for low wages to pay back the transporter who brought her to the United States illegally acted out of desperation last year when she wrapped her newborn son in a plastic bag, later stabbed him and left his body in a trash bin, a judge said in state Superior Court on Tuesday.

"This is a woman who's working at slave wages, sending the proceeds of that effort back to her home country to support her very ill child," Judge Richard Comerford Jr. said as Angelina Sarmiento, 26, formerly of 207 Henry St., Stamford, pleaded guilty to first-degree manslaughter in the death of the her newborn. "This is a woman who truly loved her children."

While the prosecutor, Senior Assistant State's Attorney James Bernardi, public defender Howard Ehring and Comerford reiterated several times that the killing was not justified, they pointed to what Bernardi called the twilight status of illegal immigrants as mitigating circumstances that called for reduction of a murder charge. The murder statute requires that the defendant did not act under extreme emotional distress, Comerford said.

In exchange for pleading guilty, Sarmiento is to be sentenced to 17 years in prison Dec. 11. She whispered, "Culpable," the Spanish term for guilty, when asked to plea, and she cried through the statements given by the attorneys.

Bernardi said Sarmiento ultimately admitted to police that she had given birth on her toilet Oct. 29. She told police that her husband, Hermando Sarmiento, came here illegally several years before, and she had followed him.

While her husband was able to pay off the transporter relatively quickly, she struggled to meet the demands while cleaning houses through a company in Stamford for 55 hours to 65 hours a week, earning about $350, less than the federal minimum wage.

Additionally, her attorney, Ehring, said Sarmiento struggled to send money home to a daughter, who is about 12 years old and needs dialysis.

Afraid to go to a doctor for birth control because of her immigration status, Sarmiento purchased through the black market birth control she had used successfully in Honduras, Bernardi and Ehring said. She was surprised to learn she was pregnant. When she discovered the pregnancy, she thought she was six months pregnant, but was in her final month, Ehring said.

She was also afraid to seek care once she discovered the pregnancy, he said.

Sarmiento told police she believed her husband would not want the additional financial burden of a new child, Bernardi said.

Police responded Oct. 30 to a report of a dead infant in a garbage bin near the Henry Street apartment, but did not immediately find the child known in court as Baby Boy Sarmiento. They did find and speak to Sarmiento in the apartment she and Hermando Sarmiento shared with another couple. At first she denied that anything had happened, Bernardi said.

A medical examiner determined that the baby was born alive, and "upon birth had cried and attempted to breathe," Bernardi said. The cause of death was asphyxiation.

Ehring said in April that the two sides were working on a resolution, but shortly thereafter, Bernardi requested DNA tests to make sure Hermando Sarmiento was the baby's father and rule out other possible motives. The case was delayed while both sides awaited the results of the test. Psychiatrists also have been examining Sarmiento for psychological conditions, including postpartum psychosis, Ehring has said.

Hermando Sarmiento returned to Honduras but has since had an accident, leaving him a paraplegic, Ehring said. The family can no longer afford the dialysis for the 12-year-old daughter, he said.

Comerford praised the attorneys involved in the case, and said they understood "the great sin of grinding poverty and the desperation of a woman who found herself in the position this woman did."

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