Despicable behavior of mom who left her toddler to roast to death in hot car that tore two families apart

Tiny toddler Amillio Gutierrez was rushed inside the ER, pale, with blue lips, blue feet, unconscious, no pulse, and not breathing.

A nurse who desperately fought to save his life measured his body temperature at 107F – the highest she had ever seen.

Amillio, just one year old, had been left in a hot car for more than two hours while his mother, Maya Hernandez, 20, was getting lip fillers at a spa 127ft away.

Paramedics found him foaming at the mouth and convulsing when they arrived at the scene in Bakersfield, California, on June 29 and he was dead within hours.

His two-year-old brother Mateo was only saved when staff plucked him from the 2022 Toyota Corolla hybrid, rushed him inside, and doused him in cold water.

Shocking facts of the case were laid out over the first three days of Maya’s trial this week, where a jury will decide if her recklessness amounts to murder.

‘The body can’t survive that, it’s impossible, especially for a child,’ a pathologist told the court of Amillio’s 107F body temperature.

Maya left the car running with the air-conditioning on and the boys with snacks and drinks, but tests showed the vehicle automatically shut off after an hour idling. 

The hot summer day peaked at 101F and experts said the temperature inside the car could have reached 143F.

Mateo survived because, at age two, his sweat glands were better developed and he was more able to regulate his body temperature.

The boys’ father, Rosendo Gutierrez, is serving 11 years in jail for unrelated crimes and found out his child was dead from the prison chaplain.

Maya and Rosendo’s families were close, overjoyed as the young couple celebrated the births of two adorable baby boys.

There were picnics with the children and extended families, joint celebrations of milestones, and gushing social media posts.

‘I love you guys,’ Rosendo’s mom Katie Martinez wrote on a photo of the couple at the first birthday party of Maya’s nephew last April.

She shared another photo of Maya’s mother Cassie Kirkland holding one of the young children, with the caption, ‘Beautiful grandma’, and ‘beauties’ on one of Maya and her two sisters.

‘So proud of both of you. You’re in your first home together, there are no words other than I’m so happy for both of you,’ Martinez wrote in another post in January 2023.

But within a year, the love between the two families would turn to ash after terrible decisions put both Maya and Rosendo behind bars and their son in a tiny coffin.

Now the two families are at each other’s throats with vicious accusations thrown left and right as they confront what Maya did to her son.

‘No emotion as she hears her baby burned from the inside out in a car she left him in for two hours,’ Martinez wrote after hearing medical testimony on Monday.

Earlier, in September, she wrote a mournful post to her two grandsons after she ‘slept in not wanting to face today’.

‘These pictures are the last ones i have of my grandson, I’ll never see him grow up. I’ll never see him walk or talk, Maya took that from me,’ she wrote.

‘But I will not stop telling his story, Amillio was so beautiful and happy. Maya was selfish and she put herself before his life.

‘Grandma misses you both so much. Mateo, Makayla wants me to never see you again. Just like her sister Maya she’s only thinking of herself.

‘I’ll never stop fighting I love you so much.’

Exactly what Maya’s family said to Martinez and her family is unclear, but she claimed they ‘tried to bash me in every ugly way’.

Kirkland blasted strangers online for denouncing her daughter as news of her arrest and murder charges spread.

‘Mind your f**king mouth. Stfu this is a tragedy. I don’t know you or I’d sock your stupid face,’ she replied to one comment.

Another read: ‘Please keep my daughter’s name out of your mouth! It is bad enough. Don’t be an attention whore.’

Martinez responded furiously to since-deleted posts by Kirkland about the mental anguish Maya was going through.

‘Where in the f**k where you Cassie, ’cause getting her a** and lips done while my grandkids were really going through something,’ she wrote.

‘How dare you, and yes my son’s in jail because of his choices he’s not perfect but he didn’t kill his kid 

‘Nobody is gonna be the victim here except my babies. You knew she was going through something, where were you then your daughter needed you?

‘When have you been her mom? She calls me from jail, do you even know how hard it is to accept a call from someone who killed your grandchild?

‘Be there for your daughter instead of being this made up bada** so i can grieve for my grandchild.’

Even before their child’s death, the relationship between Maya and Rosendo wasn’t as it appeared, the accused mother told the court.

‘He was abusive to me… He’d hit on me, take me places and hit me,’ Maya testified. 

Security footage played in court showed Maya arrive at Always Beautiful Med Spa in Bakersfield in her Toyota Corolla hybrid at 1.10pm.

She got out of the car at 1.35pm and returned a minute later after being told the staff were running behind schedule, going back inside at 2.04pm. 

She would never see her baby son alive again.

Video from inside the spa showed her sitting in the waiting room until 4.08pm, when she finally went in for her procedure.

Witnesses and security footage showed her happily chatting to staff and other customers while they waited, not appearing concerned at all.

Staff testified, and Maya admitted in her police interview, that she was told she could take her sons inside. At least two other children were there while she waited.

‘Can I bring my kids in by chance?’ Maya asked in a text to the salon.

The reply was: ‘Sure if you don’t mind them waiting in the waiting area hun?’

Maya told detectives in her interview, which was shown to the court, that she didn’t leave her kids with her sister because she didn’t want to bother her.

She explained she didn’t bring them inside the spa, even though it was allowed, because she didn’t want them running around while she had her procedure.

Maya said she knew leaving them inside was dangerous, but said she believed she would be in and out of the spa quickly.

She only returned to her car, about 4.30pm, to retrieve her phone to pay for her lip fillers.

When she didn’t return after about 15 minutes, spa worker Isabel Carreon went outside to look for her – fearing she drove off without paying.

Carreon told the court through a Spanish translator that she found Maya with a baby in her arms. The little boy was ‘quite red and swollen’.

She testified that Maya was ‘not reacting to get help for the baby’ and didn’t show any urgency to get him help.

Carreon got Mateo after seeing him inside the car – Maya didn’t tell her he was there.

The salon worker testified that she told another customer to call 911 because Maya wasn’t calling due to fear her children would be taken from her.

Maya’s lawyer had that claim removed from the record and the jury told to disregard it.

Other salon staff, customers, and workers at neighboring businesses rallied to help the stricken children until paramedics arrived.

One told the court how she held Mateo in her arms and doused him with cold water, desperately trying to keep him alive – still scarred by not knowing in those moments if he would live or die.

Later, at the police station, detectives broke the news to Maya that her youngest son was dead in the middle of the interview. 

‘He’s dead?’ she asked in disbelief. ‘He’s dead,’ one of the officers confirmed.

Maya began uncontrollably sobbing over the interrogation table.

‘They’re everything I work for, they’re everything I do,’ she said.

Maya faces charges of second-degree murder, manslaughter, and two counts of child cruelty in Kern County Superior Court.

She took the stand on Monday where she denied knowing the car would eventually, turning off the air-conditioning and leaving the temperature to skyrocket.

‘I had left the AC on, I just really thought they were going to be OK in there,’ she told the court.

Maya also relived the moment she found her children on the verge of death in the car when she finally came outside.

‘When I had sat down I immediately looked back at the kids, I noticed Teo’s cheeks were red, I looked over at Amillio and noticed he was blankly staring at me,’ she told the court.

When she called 911 – six minutes after arriving at the car – a dispatcher asked if Amillio was awake. ‘No, he’s dead, he’s dead!’ she replied.

The jury also heard recorded jail calls between Maya and Rosendo that prosecutors claimed showed she knew leaving her children in the car could kill them.

‘You know what you did was wrong, right?’ Rosendo asked on July 5.

Maya replied: ‘Obviously. I’m not an idiot.’

Her lawyer, Teryl Wakeman, told the jury she admitted to the second and third court, but contested the murder charge as she never meant to hurt her sons.

He argued this ‘incredibly sad’ case is not about murder but is about a 20-year-old mother of two, a car, and a terrible, awful mistake.’ 

‘She left her kids in their car seats with cookies, a bottle of milk, each, and with [her older son] she left her phone so that he could watch TV.’ 

‘The car was running, the air conditioning was on. Ms. Hernandez thought that the car would stay running, that the air condition would, likewise, remain on.’

But prosecutor Stephanie Taconi argued the young mom ‘chose vanity’ over her boys.

‘[Maya] chose to leave them in the car. She chose a break. She chose time to herself. She chose time to socialize with other adults. And again, that choice cost Amillio his life,’ she told the court.

‘There are no accidents here. There are no accidents in this case. This isn’t a case of a forgotten child whose mom was in a hurry. 

‘These were intentional actions, done willfully by the defendant.’ 

If you or someone you know needs help, please call or text the confidential 24/7 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline in the US on 988. There is also an online chat available at 988lifeline.org.