Mother awaits trial for newborn’s drowning

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A D.C. woman has been accused of drowning, strangling, and dismembering her newborn son in 2013. She is set to return to court on March 12, 2018.

Lillian Alvarado will return before Judge Milton Lee in just under two months to give her defense team time to dissect exam results from two doctors assessing Alvarado’s mental health.

Even though the government filed a motion, requesting the results of the doctors’ exams, prosecution has not received the documents.

Both the prosecution and defense would like time to review the documents in preparation for an upcoming status hearing, which has been approved by Judge Lee.

Alvarado, 24, has been charged with first-degree murder and first-degree cruelty to children.

Prosecutors said she never told her family she was pregnant and tried to flush the partially dismembered infant down the toilet.

The incident took place inside her family’s apartment in Northwest D.C. in November of 2013. The discovery of the infant’s body was made when neighbors in the apartment below Alvarado reported bloody water leaking through their ceiling.

Alvarado’s defense team argued that she is not mentally competent for trial and should remain at a psychiatric hospital, but initial psychiatric evaluations revealed she is in fact competent.

A previously scheduled trial date of Jan. 7, 2019, remains.