Police: Baby’s legs intentionally broken by daycare operator in Salt Lake City

SALT LAKE CITY, Utah, Feb. 28, 2018 (Gephardt Daily) — A 65-year-old daycare operator has been booked into jail after police say she admitted to purposely slamming a 10-month-old boy on the floor.

The force was enough to break both of the baby’s legs.

Elvira Ortega is charged with child abuse, a second-degree felony, in the Feb. 22 injury of the baby.

According to a probable cause statement, the child’s mother, identified in court documents as C.F., picked up her son (J.F.) from daycare and immediately noticed his behavior was unusual. He was crying from pain, C.F. said, and only wanted to be held and comforted.

The next day, J.F. was still unwilling to move, crawl or sit. C.F. went to Ortega’s residence to confront her and her daughter, but the mother found the caregivers’ explanations “inconsistent and unsatisfactory,” the probable cause statement says.

C.F. then took her son to Primary Children’s Hospital, where a pediatrician found that J.F.’s tibias — the larger and stronger of the shin bones — were fractured just below the knee in both legs.

“Those injuries are atypical for children that are not yet walking, and are consistent with a forceful impact of the child’s feet with a hard surface,” the probable cause statement says.

After being advised of her Miranda Rights by a Salt Lake City Police officer on Feb. 26, “Ortega admitted that on February 22, 2018, she was frustrated with J.F. because he would not stop crying,” the statement says.

“Ortega admitted that because J.F. would not stop crying, she was holding him and slammed him down on the bathroom floor, feet first.”

Ortega’s bail was set at $100,000, which prosecutors requested because they consider Ortega a flight risk.

According to an amended filing, “the defendant told the interviewing officer that she did not want to go to jail and would rather leave to Mexico.”