MOUNTAIN VIEW, California — An 8-month-old girl is dead, and her father is heading to prison for at least 25 years — after a blow so violent it moved her brain inside her skull.
Jesse Manuel Figueroa, 36, was sentenced to 25 years to life after a jury convicted him of murdering his infant daughter Raina, the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s Office announced.
The case stretches back to July 4, 2020.
What happened on the Fourth of July
Figueroa brought his unconscious daughter to a Mountain View fire station that evening.
He told first responders that Raina had “mysteriously fallen unconscious” while he was taking her to a family barbecue, and that blood had started seeping from her nose.
Firefighters rushed her to the hospital immediately.
Raina died a few days later.
What doctors found
While Raina was being treated at the hospital, something chilling emerged — a bruise slowly appeared on her cheek in the “distinctive shape and size of an adult hand.”
The medical examiner’s findings were devastating.
Raina had died from blunt force trauma causing brain hemorrhaging.
“The blow to Raina was so hard it caused her brain to dislodge and move to a different part of her head,” prosecutors wrote, citing the medical examiner’s conclusion.
A pattern of abuse at home
Investigators uncovered that the violence did not stop with Raina.
Figueroa had also been abusive toward Raina’s mother and their two other children, ages 2 and 3.
Prosecutors said he strangled Raina’s mother and forced the young children to kneel on rice as punishment.
Because of his behavior, Figueroa was not allowed to have unsupervised visits with Raina.
But he persuaded her mother to let him take the baby alone — to the same barbecue he later used as his alibi.
‘She was not just a name in a case file’
The weight of what was lost was felt deeply in the courtroom during sentencing.
“Raina mattered. Her life mattered,” her grandfather said in a victim impact statement. “She was not just a name in a case file. She was a baby who was deeply loved and who should still be here today.”
Santa Clara County District Attorney Jeff Rosen noted that Raina would have been 6 years old today.
“These cases break our hearts — at the brutality, at the senselessness, at the sheer loss of an innocent child,” Rosen said. “Today, we can only feel some sense of justice that this man will never hurt another child.”
Figueroa will serve a minimum of 25 years before he is eligible for parole.
Cases like Raina’s are a reminder of how critical it is for communities to speak up when they see signs of abuse. If you suspect a child is in danger, contact your local child protective services or call the Childhelp National Child Abuse Hotline at 1-800-422-4453.
Do you think 25 years to life is the right sentence for a crime like this? Share your thoughts in the comments — this conversation matters.
