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Medical experts for both sides will be conferring and exchanging information, now that Superior Court Judge Liliana DeAvila-Silebbi yesterday removed the last obstacle to the trial of Yoher Jimenez.
DeAvila-Silebi yesterday ruled against a request by Jimenez’s lawyer that she throw out a statement by his client to police, along with other evidence, because he wasn’t told he was a suspect in the April 2010 death of Baby Victoria.
Yoher Jimenez with Baby Victoria (PHOTO: Courtesy Jimenez family)
Jimenez and his girlfriend had just moved from a relative’s house in Hasbrouck Heights to Harding Place in Fairview when she went shopping, leaving Victoria with him.
(The couple began dating in Florida soon after the child was born of a different father, authorities said.)
Prosecutors said Jimenez hit the child with his hands, held her head under water in a bathtub and also beat her head against the side of the tub.
Police found Victoria unresponsive. She was first taken to Palisades General Hospital and then transferred to St. Joseph’s Medical Center in Paterson, where it was discovered that she had a skull fracture and several rib fractures.
Victoria died a few days later.
Jimenez, a Colombian national, denied killing her.
“The baby was in the crib and [I] heard the baby coughing and gave her water,” Yoher Andres Jimenez told CLIFFVIEW PILOT through a relative at the time. “Then [I] came back to check on her and she was pale and her lips were purple.”
Family members took to Facebook and other social networks, insisting that Jimenez was innocent.
A cousin told CLIFFVIEW PILOT that Jimenez was “an honorable young man, hardworking person, responsible and with full integrity. He’s being accuse[d] and charged unfairly.”
The mother, Jakeline Jimenez, was charged with child endangerment after investigators determined that she knew enough not to leave her alone with her boyfriend because of “past abuse at [his] hands,” Bergen County Prosecutor John L. Molinelli said at the time.
The INS also sought to detain her. After a month in the county jail, she was released.
Yoher Jimenez, meanwhile, remained held on $1 million bail in the county jail, charged with murder, aggravated assault, attempted murder, and child endangerment in connection with the April 4, 2010 incident.
STORY: CLIFFVIEW PILOT Courthouse Reporter Mary K. Miraglia
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