A 22-year-old woman was sentenced Friday to 15 years in prison for conspiring with two gang members to have her roommate’s 15-day-old baby kidnapped in Santa Ana to cover up a lie to her fiance that she was pregnant.
Gladys Remigio, who was 17 at the time of the attempted abduction on Nov. 29, 2011, pleaded guilty Feb. 26 to criminal conspiracy, first-degree robbery, first-degree burglary and attempted kidnapping, and admitted sentencing enhancements for gang activity.
Co-defendants Steven David Quirino, 24, and Robert Henry Rodriguez, 23, pleaded guilty previously and are in state prison. Quirino was sentenced in March 2014 to nearly seven years behind bars, while Rodriguez was sentenced in November 2012 to a 16-year term.
According to police and prosecutors, Remigio recruited her gang friends to help her kidnap her roommate’s newborn daughter. At the time of Remigio’s arrest, Santa Ana police said she had told her out-of-town fiance that she was pregnant.
Eight months into the lie, she concocted the plan to have two gang members break into the home and steal the infant, then give her the baby girl so she could present the newborn to her fiance as her own, police said.
The defendants, armed with a replica gun, ordered the mother into a bedroom and the men fled while Remigio tried to leave the home with the baby. But the mother emerged from the bedroom and managed to get her newborn back from Remigio outside the home, prosecutors said.
— City News Service