Attempted murder charge is ordered (California)

By Dana Littlefield
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER

It sounded like a cat yowling in the darkness.

Or maybe a baby crying, Gerry Williams thought momentarily when he heard strained sounds coming from outside his Bay Terraces apartment. Whatever it was, it clearly was in distress.

“Whoever's watching this baby isn't doing a very good job,” he remembered telling his wife the morning of June 5.

While testifying in San Diego Superior Court yesterday, Williams said he followed the sounds to a parking lot, where he found a tightly knotted trash bag stashed behind a large trash bin.

“I told my neighbor, 'If this is a cat, then this cat is going to have to bite me because I am going to open this bag,' ” Williams said. When he did, he found a newborn boy, lying among bloody paper towels, discarded cigarette butts and torn-up lottery tickets.

Its umbilical cord was still attached.

After hearing testimony from Williams and several other witnesses, Judge Browder A. Willis ordered Janelle Akemi Bulatao, 24, to stand trial for attempted murder.

If convicted, she could face a life sentence.

She was arrested Jan. 12 after police received an anonymous tip. The baby was taken to a hospital, where doctors found trace amounts of methamphetamine in his system.

The boy was later placed in foster care.

Bulatao's lawyer, Brad Patton, argued that prosectors had not presented enough evidence to show Bulatao's actions were premeditated. He said Bulatao had a number of stressful factors in her life and was “in a panicked state of mind” when she left the baby outside.

Deputy District Attorney Wendy Patrick Mazzarella argued that Bulatao could have abandoned it more safely, such as by placing the baby in a basket on a doorstep, rather than inside two trash bags behind a Dumpster.

Another witness, Gary Wilson, testified that Bulatao and her on-again, off-again boyfriend stayed at his apartment on Deep Dell Road occasionally. He said Bulatao spent the night on June 4 and told him she wasn't feeling well.

Wilson and his roommate left late that night and went to a casino. When they returned the next morning, they found blood in the floor of the hallway and living room, and Bulatao was lying on the couch.

Wilson he did not know that Bulatao had been pregnant.

Wilson and his roommate started to clean up the blood and called Bulatao's former boyfriend, James Shelton, to help. Bulatao later admitted to Shelton that she had given birth and left the baby outside, Wilson said.

Wilson, his roommate and Shelton then drove Bulatao to her parents' house.

Shelton testified that Bulatao told him in September 2004 that she was pregnant and was planning to have an abortion. She told him another man was the father.

Bulatao told a San Diego police detective she thought she had a miscarriage early in the pregnancy, but realized she was still pregnant when her belly kept growing.

Bulatao told the detective she believed her family would be disappointed in her if they knew of her pregnancy.



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Dana Littlefield: (619) 542-4590; dana.littlefield@uniontrib.com

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/metro/20060307-9999-1m7bulatao.html