Hospitalized baby’s mother arrested in continuing probe

A 20-year-old San Marcos woman has been arrested in connection with her severly injured baby, who is in Dell Children’s Hospital being treated for injuries including skull and rib fractures and a lacerated liver.

Maudicella Cabello-Perez was taken into custody by San Marcos Police Thursday, Jan. 10 and has a bond of $5,000 for the offense of abandoning/endangering a child by criminal negligence, a state jail felony. Richard Blythe, described as her boyfriend, is accused of causing the injuries to the 9-month-old girl and is still at large.

According to the affidavit of probable cause for Cabello-Perez obtained by SMPD Detective Robert Elrod, Dell Children’s summoned San Marcos police on Nov. 4 about the baby, who had been taken to the hospital after vomiting for three days. “However it was found she had three skull fractures, eight broken ribs in different states of breakage, repair and re-break and lacerations to the liver,” Elrod wrote. The baby remains hospitalized.

The affidavit says that both Cabello-Perez and Blythe were interviewed and that Blythe, who has a prior arrest for injury to a child, told police that he was responsible, but that she was aware of his “anger issues” and had once walked in as he was “holding (the baby) with both hands and squeezing her as hard as he could.”

“From the amount and type of injuries that occurred over the two months prior to (the baby) going to the hospital, Maudicella would have noticed injuries…,” Elrod wrote. “Maudicella knew Richard’s past and admitted that he had anger issues. However, she failed to protect (the baby) even after seeing Richard injure her.”