A Kern County judge sentenced a Tulare County mother to 15 years in prison Thursday after prosecutors said she left her two young sons in a parked car outside a Bakersfield medical spa, where 1-year-old Amilio Gutierrez died in extreme heat.
The sentence closes the trial court phase of a case that drew broad attention in California because it turned on a stark question: whether Maya Hernandez acted with murder-level disregard or criminal negligence when she went inside for a cosmetic appointment on June 29, 2025. A jury could not agree on murder in December, but it convicted Hernandez on two child endangerment counts. She later pleaded no contest to involuntary manslaughter and admitted related child-abuse enhancements, leading to the fixed 15-year term imposed Thursday.
According to police documents and trial testimony, Hernandez drove to Bakersfield with her sons from Tulare County and went to Always Beautiful Med Spa on South Real Road on a day when the outside temperature reached 101 degrees. Records presented in court said she arrived in the early afternoon, learned the office was running behind and eventually went inside after 2 p.m. Staff members later testified that the cosmetic procedure itself lasted only about 15 to 20 minutes, but Hernandez remained away from the car for more than two hours. When she returned at about 4:30 p.m., authorities said, she found Amilio foaming at the mouth and seizing. Officers were dispatched at about 4:43 p.m. and arrived two minutes later. Doctors later recorded the boy’s body temperature at 107 degrees. He died at 5:48 p.m. at a Bakersfield hospital.
One of the most damaging details for prosecutors came from messages and witness accounts showing Hernandez had a way to keep the boys out of the heat. A nurse at the spa told investigators that Hernandez asked before the appointment whether she could bring her children. The answer, according to court records and testimony, was yes, as long as they stayed in the waiting room. Witnesses also described that room as a place where other children were present during the day. Yet no one inside the spa said Hernandez told them the boys were outside in the car. Isabel Carreon, a spa employee, testified that when she went outside later, she found Hernandez in the driver’s seat holding the baby. Carreon told jurors Hernandez did not show urgency and had not called 911 by the time Carreon saw her. Another witness said the surviving 2-year-old boy was taken inside and cooled with water after workers realized he was also overheated.
Prosecutors backed up those witness accounts with mechanical and medical evidence. A foreman from a Toyota dealership told investigators that Hernandez’s 2022 Toyota Corolla could shut off automatically after about an hour if it remained running in park without activity. Hernandez told police she believed the air conditioner would stay on because she had spent long periods in the car before, even sleeping in it. But a detective testified that a reenactment showed the cabin temperature rising by about 20 degrees within 15 minutes after the automatic shutoff. By the time Hernandez came back, the prosecution said, the inside of the car had reached about 116 degrees. Police documents said the boys were strapped in their seats with snacks, milk and a phone playing cartoons. A responding officer described the front passenger area as warm to the touch. A forensic pathologist later told jurors that Amilio died from heat stroke caused by extreme heat inside the vehicle.
The trial also exposed sharp differences over what Hernandez knew and what she intended. Prosecutor Stephanie Taconi argued that Hernandez made a series of deliberate choices that day and knew the danger. Jurors saw a recorded interview in which Hernandez, described in court as a trained certified nursing assistant, acknowledged knowing children can die in hot cars. During that interview she sobbed and said, “It’s not like I left them in there just to die.” Her lawyers did not dispute that she acted recklessly. From the start of trial, the defense said the evidence supported manslaughter and child-cruelty charges, not second-degree murder, because Hernandez did not act with implied malice. Hernandez later testified that she believed the car would stay cool with the air on and that she checked on the boys through a phone app. Trial testimony also complicated one detail repeated in early coverage: while police records first described a lip-filler appointment, a spa employee told jurors Hernandez actually received a liquid Brazilian butt lift.
The legal path to Thursday’s sentence stretched across months. Hernandez was arrested in June 2025 after the baby’s death. Her murder trial opened Dec. 8 in Kern County Superior Court. After deliberations, jurors deadlocked on second-degree murder. The judge then declared a mistrial on that count and, because of the way the charges were structured, on the involuntary manslaughter count as well. The same jury did convict Hernandez on two child endangerment counts, one tied to Amilio and one tied to his older brother, Mateo. A retrial decision remained pending into early 2026, with status hearings pushed back. Then Hernandez changed course. In February, she accepted a plea deal and entered a no contest plea to involuntary manslaughter along with enhancements tied to great bodily harm to a child younger than 5 and child abuse resulting in death. In exchange, prosecutors dropped the murder charge and the court set a fixed 15-year sentence.
Thursday’s hearing centered not on the facts of the hot June afternoon, but on the people who have been living with it since. Amilio’s father, Rosendo Gutierrez, attended court for the first time in the case and cried as the sentence was handed down. “He was a good baby,” Gutierrez said outside court. Amilio’s paternal grandmother, Katie Martinez, told the judge the punishment did not match the loss and said the family and community would keep speaking the boy’s name. “15 years doesn’t look like enough,” she said. Judge Charles R. Brehmer acknowledged the family’s pain but said the child would not be forgotten. “Amilio’s not going to be forgotten, by anybody,” Brehmer said. He also said Hernandez would go to prison while carrying what he described as a lifelong burden from her son’s death. Family members said the surviving boy still needs help dealing with what happened.
With the sentencing now complete, the courtroom fight over whether this was murder or manslaughter has ended in Kern County trial court as a 15-year prison term. What remains is the lasting damage to a family, a surviving child and a case that turned on minutes, heat and a choice witnesses said never had to be made.
Author note: Last updated March 7, 2026.