Christina Veronica Alvarez of Rancho Cucamonga last month was given a six-year prison sentence for having possessed and stored a fentanyl and xylazine pill where a 10- year-old child was able to access it and then died after swallowing it.
Nathaniel Castro Mendoza, 10, also of Rancho Cucamonga, in December 2024 from died of acute fentanyl and xylazine toxicity according to a determination made by the San Bernardino County coroner in February 2025
At the time of young Mendoza’s death, first responders had been summoned to Alvarez’s residence in the 9000 block of Arrow Route regarding an unresponsive child. Efforts to revive him were unsuccessful.
The sheriff’s department pushed to have its overdose response team take up the case, which determined Alvarez possessed the fentanyl and stored it in a manner and in a place at her residence where Mendoza encountered it. This led to the fatal overdose, the detectives concluded, and Alvarez was arrested on March 13, 2025.
She was charged with violating Penal Code Section PC273A(A)-F, subject to a Penal Code PC12022.95-E sentencing enhancement upon conviction.
Motions by Alvarez’s attorney, Deputy Public Defender Brandon Lu, to have the criminal charges dismissed pursuant to the defendant undergoing mental health and addiction treatment did not succeed, with Judge Ingrid Uhler on January 9 consigning Alvarez to trial on the felony charges against her.
Alvarez was prosecuted by Deputy District Attorney Reza Rownaghi and Deputy district Attorney Jade Najme.
Following two pre-preliminary hearings and during what was Alvarez’s eighth scheduled preliminary hearing on March 19, 2026 before Judge Joni I Sinclair, Alvarez somewhat precipitously lodged a statement that was filed with the court and entered guilty plea to PC273A(A)-F: willfully causing or permitting a child to suffer and the accompanying PC12022.95-E: willfully harming/injuring another resulting in death.
Considerable controversy ensued with regard to the widespread perception that Alvarez 33, had not willfully caused the child’s death and that because of her lack of sophistication together with her impatience and frustration with the criminal process she was being subjected to she had entered the pleas to be done with the prosecutorial phase on the district attorney’s office’s terms. No one, including Sinclair, District Attorney Jason Anderson, Rownaghi, San Bernardino County Public Defender Thomas Sone and Lu publicly disputed that Alvarez did not actually intend for Mendoza to die, and those officers of the court did not seek to explain why they had nevertheless allowed the pleas to be entered anyway.
Alvarez was back in Judge Sinclair’s Courtroom in Rancho Cucamonga Department 8 on April 20, 2026 where, instead of Judge Sinclair, Judge Michael Dest carried out the sentencing. Based on Alvarez’s nolo contendre plea to a single county of felony child abuse likely to produce great bodily injury, which carried with it a sentencing enhancement of willful harm or injury resulting in death, Judge Dest engaged in a somewhat confusing sentencing calculation that involved consigning the defendant to prison for “the upper term of 6 years” on the felony conviction for felony child abuse likely to produce great bodily injury, while crediting her with 403 days in custody consisting of 402 actual days behind bars during which she had earned a good conduct credit qualifying her to serve half of her term, translating into a total of 805 days. As to the sentencing enhancement pertaining to engaging in willful harm or injury to another that resulted in death, Judge Dest imposed “the upper term of 4 years,” which was “stayed pursuant to court order,” resulting in Alvarez being “sentenced for a total determinate term of 6 years.”
-Mark Gutglueck