Following her guilty plea, a mother from Fremont could spend just under five more months in jail for the death of her baby son, who overdosed on fentanyl last year while the mother was passed out from the strong drug.
Sophia Gastelum-Vera, 27, cried as she apologized for her part in the overdose death of 23-month-old Kristofer Ferreyra on Monday. Ferreyra’s death in October 2023 added to the growing number of young deaths linked to the synthetic drug.
She also promised to keep going to rehab and treatment for an addiction that had taken over her life and kept her away from Kristofer’s three remaining brothers.
Gastelum-Vera, 27, read from a prepared statement at a hearing on Monday morning. “I’m not going to try to justify my actions at all,” she said. “I really miss my child and long to be the mother I used to be.”
If Gastelum-Vera had been found guilty of involuntary manslaughter in August, she could have been sent to jail for four years. As part of her plea deal with prosecutors, several lower charges were dropped, including a felony charge of child abuse and several drug-related misdemeanors.
Alameda County Superior Court Judge Clifford Blakely seemed to change his mind about Gastelum-Vera on Monday morning, though, after hearing how much her treatment and counseling providers praised her dedication to rehab.
They remembered that the mother goes to at least 12 group therapy meetings a week and always tests negative for drugs.
They also said nice things about Gastelum-Vera for spending so much time with her three other kids when they came to visit once a week.
During the hearing, Blakeley said, “I came in here fully prepared to send you to prison today.”
He talked about a few “significant” reasons why Gastelum-Vera should have gotten a harsher term. For example, she smoked a drug she knew was bad for her while her toddler and another child were in the room. Blakeley said it was worst that the boy still had so much life to live.
Blakely also praised Gastelum-Vera for fighting her addiction so hard after being sent by a different judge to a three-month inpatient treatment program at the end of last year.
It was a show of support for Gastelum-Vera on Monday when some of her family and friends spoke out in court. They joined the rehab counselors who have been in charge of her care for a while now.
“She wanted it—she wanted a change in her life,” said Darlene Mitchell, who is in charge of programs at Orchid Women’s Perinatal Treatment, the private treatment center where Gastelum-Vera first went after getting help from the court.
Blakely gave Gastelum-Vera a year in jail on Monday, but if she behaved well, that term could be cut in half. She also got credit for the 43 days she had already spent in jail after being arrested last year. She has to do two years of probation after she gets out.
Blakely also said no to Gastelum-Vera’s lawyer’s request to let the woman serve her time in jail while she was under house arrest.
“It’s not enough to say that this is a sad situation… “Look, this is about as sad as it gets,” Blakeley said. “I know that your regret is real.”
On October 18, 2023, around 6:30 a.m., Gastelum-Vera found Kristofer not responding. The hearing took place almost a year to the day after that. Her boyfriend took the boy and his mother to the hospital. He slept in the room with them that night too. After an hour, Kristofer was declared dead.
At first, Gastelum-Vera told the cops that she didn’t keep any drugs in the house. But when police searched the Fremont home soon after the boy died, they found fentanyl-covered empty baggies and notes on the mother’s phone about how she bought the drug the night before the boy died, according to court records.
Fears that the powerful opioid, which is 50 times stronger than heroin, was being sold and used more and more in family houses, where babies can easily get it, grew after this case. Young children and babies in Brentwood, Livermore, Oakland, and San Jose have already either died or been badly poisoned by the drug.
It also made people worry more about Alameda County’s safety net for kids. This news organization looked at Kristofer’s child welfare records and found that they were not being kept consistently. They also found troubling inconsistencies in how county officials reacted to the toddler’s death.
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Records obtained by this newspaper show that soon after the incident, one social worker suggested that the boy’s three younger brothers stay with their mother, even though police had just found drug paraphernalia all over the boy’s bedroom. The boy’s death wasn’t mentioned when the social worker first looked at the home.
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