The 33-year-old woman charged this year in the murder of her child gave birth Wednesday to a boy, her father said.
Joseph Kennedy said he received a call notifying him that Sharon Carrillo gave birth to a healthy boy weighing 7 pounds.
Sharon and her husband, Julio Carrillo Jr., 51, are charged with the depraved indifference murder of their 10-year-old daughter, Marissa Kennedy, inside a Stockton Springs condominium in February.
Both parents are being held at Two Bridges Regional Jail. It was unclear what hospital Carrillo delivered the child in, or whether she would return immediately to the jail.
“I have received a call, not from a hospital, not from the prison, that Sharon did have her baby,” said Kennedy, of New Windsor, New York. “Seven pounds and healthy, that’s all I can tell you.”
Kennedy did not know if the child was named yet, but NewsCenter Maine reported that the boy was named Nicholas Isaiah.
Kennedy said Julio Carrillo Jr.’s parents, Julio Sr. and Carmen, have applied to take custody of the newborn.
“They have the first two children and I believe they were getting the third one, also,” Kennedy said.
The death of Marissa Kennedy in February and the arrest of her parents shook the state, and has highlighted serious questions about the state-run child protective system and other social safety nets designed to keep children safe.
Before they moved to Stockton Springs, the Carrillos lived in an apartment building in Bangor where neighbors said they frequently heard fighting and suspected physical abuse by Julio against his wife.
Police were called multiple times to the building, but the police department said in a statement that at no time did officers witness anything that led them to believe Marissa or her two siblings, ages 1 and 2, were in a dangerous or unhealthy environment.
According to a police affidavit filed in Waldo County District Court, the Carrillos beat Marissa every day from October until her death using a leather belt, their fists, and in one case, a metal mop handle, which Julio Carrillo broke against the girl’s ribs.
When the girl awoke recently and could not walk or talk without slurring her speech, Sharon Carrillo beat the girl one more time because she believed Marissa was pretending to be injured, Julio Carrillo told investigators.
The next day, Marissa was unresponsive. Police said the Carrillos then hatched a plan to make Marissa’s death look like an accident. They carried her body to a basement boiler room and left her on the concrete, then called police.
Investigators said in court records that both Sharon and Julio admitted to beating the girl before her death.
Sharon’s attorneys have said that she has intellectual disabilities that made her susceptible to coercion and manipulation by her husband, who also physically and verbally abused her.
The case will soon also go before the Supreme Judicial Court to settle a dispute about whether prosecutors with the Maine Attorney General’s Office followed procedure when they requested and obtained records from a school that Sharon Carrillo had attended in New York State. Her attorneys are asking the court to bar the Attorney General’s Office from participating in the case.
Sharon Carrillo of Stockton Springs is led into Waldo County Superior Court in Belfast on Feb. 28 to face a murder charge in the death of her daughter Marissa Kennedy. (David Leaming, Morning Sentinel file photo)
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