Editor's note: This report details graphic scenes of child abuse.
It took just 45 minutes to convict Jose Angel Ruiz for the abuse death of five-year-old Mercedes Losoya, and less than 20 more minutes to sentence him to life in prison.
The 27-year-old man, along with the girl’s mother, Katrina Mendoza, made headlines in the February 2022 killing, when details of the grisly killing came to light.
As those appalling details and the physical evidence that linked Ruiz to them were laid out for the jury, the decision to convict became much easier.
“I think we all went into that room and pretty quickly, were on the same page about guilt versus nonguilt,” said Kelsey Malone, one of the jurors in the case.
Malone reflected on the case, how the jury came to its conclusion, and the weight of such a case on those who bore witness.
Losoya died covered from head to toe with bruises, said medical personnel. She was severely beaten and abused so badly that her kidneys stopped working.
The jury wasn’t told this during their selection — only that the case involved child abuse. The first days of the child featured post-mortem photos of a girl missing patches of hair, teeth, and masses of bruises.
“I've had enough years on the planet to know that anybody is capable of anything. But to see physical evidence of it was a bit of a shock,” Malone said.
It was a shock to know how she died,and how the abuse had gone on for so long. The prosecution introduced two of Ruiz’s neighbors.
“The neighbors upstairs — I think, I think they are severely beating their child,” said Mo Hosana in a recorded 911 call to the San Antonio Police. “The kid has just been screaming the last 30 minutes —- and she just keeps saying ‘Ow ow ow.' ”
It was hard for the jury to know that the abuse had gone on so long. Mendoza had moved in with Ruiz in January — and prosecutors say the beatings got worse for three weeks.
But who committed the abuse?
Mendoza’s family reported the young mother several times over the years for how she treated Mercedes, the younger of her two children. Defense attorneys said there were more than 6,000 pages of Child Protective Service documents in the case.
Beyond that Losoya died in her mother’s care, two days after they had moved out of Ruiz’s Vance Jackson apartment. And he hadn’t seen the girl since.
“She was fine,” Ruiz told police in an interview.
“You thought you were disciplining her but you were killing her. And now you're just demonstrating to me that you're a coward,” replied Detective Lawrence Saiz.
A plaintive Ruiz begins to speak over the detective in the recording, “She was fine. She was fine. She was fine. She was good when she left my apartment.”
Mendoza took a plea and is expected to be sentenced in coming days. Part of the deal was giving eyewitness testimony of Ruiz’s abuse.
“But I don't think anybody in the jury really believed that she was telling 100% of the truth, when she was on the witness stand,” Malone said.
Ruiz’s attorney Theresa Connolly made much of Mendoza’s plea deal and of Mendoza’s abuse of Losoya — trying to link the girl's asthma to alleged force feeding and possible choking that happened on the day she died. Here she is speaking with former Bexar County Medical Examiner Rajesh Kannan.
“There was an allegation in the indictment against the mother that she shoved a utensil down her throat — did you observe any injuries on that?” Connolly asked.
”I mean, not at the time of death — there was no evidence of trauma,” Kannan said.
The testimony eliminated the possibility of Mendoza being the direct cause of death for Malone.
“Once, he said, there was not even a sign of anything related to her respiratory system. It kind of threw that out the window, at least for me,” he said.
Malone was convinced of Ruiz’s guilt early on — but it wasn’t beyond a reasonable doubt until later in the week. For much of the first three days of testimony — he could not see the timeline and how Ruiz was responsible for the death.
Then they were shown photos and videos that Ruiz took of himself abusing the girl.
Like the photo of Mercedes in the shower with urine soaked underpants in her mouth — or the testimony around Ruiz pushing thumbtacks into Losoya’s feet and making her stand on them.
“The pictures of the thumbtacks that were in Mercedes' feet from the surveillance, that ring camera that was in the closet with her, and those pictures brought out some audible gasps,” Malone said.
The weeks of being slapped and beaten with hands and belts all over Losoya’s body caused her muscles to break down, releasing toxic protein and electrolytes into the blood. The process is called rhabdomyolysis — and it causes the kidneys to shut down if it isn’t addressed quickly.
Losoya was sick for days leading up to her death — fatigued and vomiting. Finally, her body succumbed.
Two years later in the courtroom, Ruiz began to cry as his mother Irene Ruiz testified about how the boy she raised had himself been beaten — at times seriously — by his stepfather. Irene also cried as she described one incident where he was hospitalized for months as a result of a head injury she said the man inflicted on Ruiz.
The testimony was intended to give Ruiz — already found guilty — some extenuating testimony as to why he is the way he is. Defense attorneys said they hoped the jury would “stay with them” as they tried to give some context for their client.
“The jurors very quickly agreed that it's not an excuse,” said Malone about the testimony.
Ultimately, it was the severity of the abuse that he and other jurors could not let go — could not find leniency for.
