A 27-year-old woman in Texas will spend several years behind bars for leaving a dead infant inside of a gas station toilet in Houston last year. Harris County District Judge Kristin M. Guiney on Monday ordered Diana Guadalupe Zavala Lopez to serve four years in a state correctional facility after she pleaded guilty to one count of tampering with evidence — human corpse as well as one count of tampering/fabricating physical evidence with the intent to impede an investigation, court records reviewed by Law&Crime show.
Guiney also credited Zavala Lopez with 489 days of time already served.
As Law&Crime previously reported , agents with U.S. Customs and Border Protection apprehended Zavala Lopez in August 2023 at a bus station in Brownsville, Texas, which is the largest city in the U.S. portion of the Lower Rio Grande Valley.
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In a news release, federal authorities described Zavala Lopez as a Mexican national and “migrant who overstayed her visitor visa and was successfully taken into custody.” The release goes on to describe her as “a homicide suspect attempting to flee to Mexico,” however, homicide charges were never filed against the defendant.