The baby's mother told Detective Lt. Mary Bartlett and Detective Carlos Vieira the last time Cabrera came from Framingham to stay in the apartment
was in January and he was carrying the baby and fell. She said they were giving the baby a bath and the water got cool so she took the tub into the bathroom to change it and spilled some of the water that Cabrera slipped on.
The baby was bleeding a little from the side of the nose and they took her to the hospital where emergency room doctors told her the baby was OK.
"She cried a lot. She fell asleep in my arms. By the time we got to the hospital she was calm. She woke up because she was hungry. We call her 'Juji,'" the mother told police.
She said Cabrera had come from Framingham Tuesday night and she was at a neighbor's apartment with the baby. She told police she was looking up airline tickets for a visit with her sister in Miami before he came.
She told police Cabrera wanted to take the baby and took her back to their apartment across the hall. She returned to the apartment about five minutes later and found him playing with the baby and
got mad when she asked him to massage her lower back, she told police.
She told police she had to get up early in the morning and he took the baby in her bassinet to the living room and she went to sleep. She said Cabrera told her he fed her but she fell asleep while he was feeding her and he didn't burp her.
He told her he couldn't sleep and watched television or PlayStation, and when he checked the infant at 3 a.m., she looked OK, but when he looked again, she didn't look right, the mother of the baby told police.
Cabrera ran into the bedroom, woke her up, and told her the baby looked pale and her lips were blue, she said. She told Cabrera to call 911 and began doing CPR on the baby and she started breathing.
"Juan showed me with two fingers, but I didn't think it was enough, so I did it with pressed hands. I never did CPR before. Juan showed me," the mother said. "He said push on her chest and I gave her mouth-to-mouth. She started to breathe and bubbly blood came out of her mouth. The blood was dark red. Then the cop came and then the ambulance."
Asked about the injuries, she told police she felt the injuries were suffered the night Cabrera fell while he was carrying her. She told police the baby has never been out of her sight and she doesn't even like to leave the baby with her mother. She denied hitting or shaking her daughter.
Cabrera told police when he discovered the baby was not breathing
he picked her up and gave her a shake to see if she would wake up. He told police he has lost his temper with the baby but always put her down.
When he was asked about the injuries to the baby, he told police there was one time when he was walking in the room and she was crying and hit her head on the wall when he picked her up.
He told police he got upset after receiving a telephone call from Framingham about three weeks ago and held the baby out and shook her two or three times as he held her with his hands around her chest and squeezed her but didn't think it was that hard.
He also told police he would calm her down by swinging her in her car seat and that sometimes the seat hit his elbow or the edge of a bureau and could have jolted her.
Lynnette Leos, the lawyer for Cabrera, asked the hospital for the medical records of the baby and any record of Department of Children and Families' involvement with the family. Leos refused comment when approached outside the courtroom.
Meanwhile, neighbors said they heard the baby crying frequently.
"We would hear the baby crying all the time when he was around," said upstairs neighbor Linda Demar. "That is how I would wake up."
She said the night the baby stopped breathing, her husband awoke when the police, Fire Department and ambulance arrived. "We heard some ruckus. We heard the baby cry all the time," Demar said.
Demar said the baby's mother was good with the infant, and that she had moved to the apartment about a month before she had the baby. Maria Burgos, who lives across the hall from the baby's mother, told a reporter the mother had just graduated from high school last year.
She said she was good friends with the baby's grandmother and had called her to let her know there was a problem across the hall with the couple and the infant.
Cabrera was arrested at Children's Hospital and charged with assault and battery on a child with substantial injury.
Brennan ordered Cabrera held without bail and ordered him to return to court Friday.
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