'All I wanted to do was to get her to stop': Mother admits suffocating her two-year-old daughter because toddler kept crying

By Snejana Farberov

Published: 10:11 EDT, 1 November 2012 | Updated: 12:54 EDT, 1 November 2012

A California woman has pleaded guilty to second-degree murder after smothering her two-year-old daughter because the toddler would not stop crying.

Tiffany Lopez, 21, of Oakland, was facing a murder trial in connection to the 2010 death of her daughter, Kamilah Russell, when she accepted a plea deal with Alameda County prosecutors this week.

Lopez is expected to be sentenced to 15 years to life in prison in January, the San Francisco Chronicle reported. Guilty: Tiffany Lopez (left) admitted smothering her daughter to death in the apartment she shared with the girl's father Joseph Russell Jr (right) Victim: Kamilah Russell, two, was killed by her mother at home

The tragic incident happened on March 9, 2010, when Lopez, then 19, called police reporting that she had accidentally sat on Kamilah as the two were playing hide-and-seek at an apartment they shared with the girl's father, Joseph Russell Jr.

The young mother, who was at the time three months pregnant with her third child, claimed that the two-year-old had been hiding between coach cushions, and she had accidentally sat on her.

Kamilah was rushed to Children's Hospital Oakland after Lopez called 911 and reported that her daughter was not breathing. The toddler was pronounced dead an hour later.

Detectives who questioned the young mother said Lopez’s story did not add up because the woman weighed 250lbs, and if she were to sit on her daughter, who weighed only 37lbs, the girl would have cried in pain.

After a lengthy interrogation, Lopez eventually admitted to police that she had become frustrated with the child crying for her father, who was not home at the time. Home: The apartment building in Oakland, California, in which Lopez killed her daughter

‘All I wanted to do was to get her to stop. She wasn’t supposed to die.’ Lopez told investigators, according to Bay City News. ‘I didn’t mean to kill her! I love my baby girl!’

The mother put her hand on the girl's nose and mouth for about 17 seconds, causing her to suffocate, prosecutors said.

A pathologist ruled that Kamilah died of asphyxia due to smothering, finding that there was an inadequate blood flow to her brain.

‘Just to know that her own momma took her life... It ain't killing me. It's making me die deep inside, man,’ Kamilah's father told ABC7 after Lopez’s arrest.

The couple's second child, Tania, who was seven months old at the time, was briefly placed in state custody but later returned to the custody of Joseph Russell.

About three months prior, Lopez was arrested and charged with two counts of misdemeanor child endangerment for beating her school-age brother for drinking a can of soda.
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