SAN JOSE – Baby Phoenix Castro’s grandmother wiped away tears on the witness stand Tuesday as she described the chaotic morning when her daughter ran out of the apartment screaming “My baby’s dead!”
Rita De La Cerda rushed in after, she testified, and found her 3-month-old granddaughter lying lifeless on the couch while the baby’s father was on the phone with 911.
“I was crying over her, touching her body,” De La Cerda said.
Months would pass before the coroner’s report was released: baby Phoenix had died of a fentanyl overdose.
During the first day of a preliminary hearing before Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge Paul Bernal on Tuesday, the father, David Castro, 38, sat in his brown jail suit at the defense table and listened intently to testimony. Castro is charged with felony child endangerment and other enhancements, which could land him in jail for up to 10 years. This week’s hearing will determine if there is enough evidence to move forward to a trial.
The scourge of fentanyl has claimed the lives of five Bay Area infants or toddlers since 2020. Parents in three cases, in Brentwood, Livermore and San Jose, have been charged with murder. One mother in Fremont is facing an involuntary manslaughter charge for the fentanyl death of her 23-month-old son.
Deputy District Attorney Maria Gershenovich, who is prosecuting Castro, explained that the evidence in the Castro case supports the less serious charge. Murder charges often require evidence of malice, she said. In the death of Winter Rayo, 1, from San Jose, prosecutors have evidence from text messages between the parents that they knew the danger fentanyl posed to their daughter and they showed a “conscious disregard for human life,” District Attorney Jeff Rosen has said.
Baby Phoenix’s death in south San Jose last May forced a reckoning at the Santa Clara County’s Department of Family and Children’s Services, which allowed the baby to go home from the hospital with her father despite a history of drug use and the fact that the agency had also already removed the couple’s two older children from their custody a year earlier because of severe neglect. Police had found the children sucking on Triple A batteries, records obtained by the Bay Area News Group showed.
The infant, born in February 2023 with drugs in her system, was sent home with her father over objections from at least one social worker who warned the child would be placed in mortal danger, an investigation late last year by this news organization revealed. County Executive James Williams admitted the county “dropped the ball” in baby Phoenix’s death.
San Jose Police Officer Daniel McNamara also testified Tuesday, saying he was the first officer to arrive at the Castro apartment off Blossom Hill Road on May 13. When he walked into the living room, he found Castro and De La Cerda kneeling next to the baby with a 911 operator on the phone. The baby was on her back on the floor.
“The infant was a deep purple and blue color on her face,” McNamara testified. “I noticed no movement or breathing.”
He unbuttoned the baby’s onesie and slipped it off her shoulders to better perform CPR on her chest, he said. When he picked her up, her head and limbs were limp.
“I felt as if I were holding a doll,” he said.
The county crime lab would later find fentanyl covering the baby’s pink-flowered onesie, records show.
Defense lawyer Mishya Singh cross-examined the officer, asking whether he “inspected the rug” where the baby laid, perhaps suggesting that the fentanyl found on the onesie might have come from the floor. He said he did not.
Police that morning found drug paraphernalia in the kitchen not far from the baby’s bottle, records showed.
The baby’s mother, Emily De La Cerda, had been in an overnight drug and mental health treatment center in the week leading up to Phoenix’s death. Emily’s mother, Rita, who had custody of the two older children, had picked her up that morning for a visit with the baby. Emily was the first into the apartment. After about five minutes, she ran out screaming, Rita testified. Emily stayed with the two older children, now 5 and 3, in the car while Rita rushed in.
Four months after baby Phoenix died, Emily died, too, also of a fentanyl overdose.
Check back for more on this developing story.