COURT
Mother pleads to two felonies in 2-year-old son's death
Boy died of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound
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The mother of a 2-year-old boy who died of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound last year faces up to 10 years in prison after pleading guilty this week to a pair of felony charges.
Amellia Garcia, 21, pleaded guilty to abandonment of a child under 13 resulting in death from a firearm and tampering with evidence in the 2025 death of her son.
Second Judicial District Judge David Murphy accepted her plea Monday. Her sentencing hearing has not been scheduled.
"When we go before the court for sentencing, the range will be zero to 10 (years in prison) that she's facing for this," Garcia's attorney, Thomas Clark, said Tuesday. "So it gives her a chance at least to argue for a partially or fully probated sentence with the treatment she needs."
A prosecutor said last year that the investigation suggested the boy's fatal gunshot wound was self-inflicted.
“Unfortunately, the little boy was the one handling the firearm when it went off and killed him,” Assistant District Attorney Savannah Brandenburg-Koch told a judge last year. “There is no evidence that anybody shot him purposefully.”
Albuquerque police arrived April 6 at an apartment in the 1900 block of Buena Vista SE and saw a man approach them carrying the boy with a gunshot wound to his chest, according to a criminal complaint filed in Bernalillo County Metropolitan Court.
Garcia told police that she had gone downstairs at about noon, followed by her 2-year-old son, the complaint said. Garcia then went back upstairs, but the boy remained downstairs.
About five minutes later, Garcia heard a gunshot and ran downstairs, she told detectives. She found the boy lying face up on the floor and beside him was a handgun with an extended magazine, she said. Garcia told police that she had recently obtained a handgun for her protection.
Clark argued in a hearing last year that Garcia had no criminal history and “by all accounts is a wonderful mother” and “has done everything she can despite a very, very tough upbringing.”
