ORANGE COUNTY, Fla. – A woman who was arrested in March 2019 after driving to Winnie Palmer Hospital and telling law enforcement she had killed the dead 11-year-old girl in the passenger seat, her daughter, was found competent Monday to stand trial in Orange County.
Rosa Rivera, now 32, had been deemed incompetent in August 2020. According to investigators, she confessed to killing her daughter — uttering “my baby is gone” after officers separated her from a bloodied pocket knife she was holding when she arrived — because she thought the girl was having sex and didn’t want her to be around men.
After allegedly stabbing the girl to death in her car, she stated that she believed her actions sent the girl to heaven, deputies said.
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Rivera faces charges of second-degree murder with a weapon and aggravated manslaughter of a child, as well as a charge of battery on a law enforcement officer later recorded in April 2019; she pleaded not guilty to the murder and manslaughter charges that April and again to the battery charge that June, court records show.
She is set to go to trial May 31 at 9 a.m., records show.
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