The fight at the quinceañera started over something small, but it ended with Alexis Avila’s cousin and her boyfriend, Steven, trading blows. Steven had allegedly hit her, and by the time Alexis got home, her face was still stinging and her hands were shaking. She called 911, then her mother Martha called again, demanding a police officer come to the house, saying her daughter had been punched in the face. The Hobbs police took statements, but in the end, they decided not to file any charges.
Alexis and Steven stayed together for a couple more months after that night. They finally split for good in August of 2021, and Martha barred Steven from the house. But by then, Alexis was already pregnant. She didn’t know it, or so she would later claim.
In the first week of January 2022, she went to a doctor complaining of stomach pain. On January 6th, she says she learned she was pregnant for the first time. She told no one. She even told Steven she’d had a miscarriage months earlier.
She was terrified of what her mother would think. She kept repeating to herself that her mom would hate her. The next day, January 7th, 2022, Alexis went into labor at home. She gave birth alone, on the bathroom floor, with no help.
She wrapped her newborn son in a dirty, blood-stained towel, stuffed him inside two trash bags, and carried him to her car. Surveillance footage from a shopping center in Hobbs shows her car pulling up behind the mall just after 2:00 p. m. She stepped out, tossed a black trash bag into a green dumpster, and drove away.
The temperature that afternoon was around 36 degrees. For nearly six hours, the baby lay there alone, breathing weakly, his umbilical cord still attached. Three people happened to be digging through the dumpster that evening, looking for anything worth keeping. They heard a noise, something like an animal whining.
They tore open the bag and found a tiny baby boy, alive but barely, smeared with blood and hypothermic. One of them, April, cradled him in her arms. Another, Michael, called 911, his voice urgent: they had just found a baby in the trash. First responders arrived within minutes.
The baby’s body temperature was so low the paramedics couldn’t even get a reading. They rushed him to Covenant Health Hobbs Hospital, where he got a blood transfusion, oxygen, and a feeding tube. He was then airlifted to a larger hospital in Lubbock, Texas, about a hundred miles away. By the next day, he was in stable condition.
The New Mexico Children, Youth, and Families Department took temporary legal custody, and the public started donating baby supplies. That same night, police pulled the surveillance footage and traced the car’s registration. The suspect was Alexis Avila. The next morning, officers went to her family’s home.
Alexis agreed to go to the police station for an interview. She told investigators the same story she would keep telling: she didn’t know she was pregnant until the day before. She said she went to the bathroom and the baby just came out. She was in a panic, she said, scared, alone, unsure what to do.
She admitted to police that she decided to get rid of him. At one point, she asked if she could still be the boy’s mom. Investigators pressed her on whether she understood that leaving a newborn in a trash bin could be fatal. She went silent.
Officers later noted her detachment; she referred to the baby only as “it,” never as her son. Still, she didn’t deny what she had done. She was charged with attempted first-degree murder and child abuse resulting in great bodily harm. At her first court appearance, she was released on an unsecured bond and placed under house arrest.
She was allowed to leave only for legal or medical appointments, forbidden from contacting her son or any witnesses, and ordered to remain in the county. Her mother, Martha, spoke to reporters and said everyone makes mistakes, insisting Alexis truly hadn’t understood she was pregnant and that the entire situation was a tragic mistake made out of fear. Not everyone was sympathetic. The owner of the store whose camera caught the incident was vocal in his anger, blasting Martha for excusing her daughter and questioning how no one knew about the pregnancy when Alexis had seen a doctor days earlier.
The baby’s father, Steven, was only a minor and hadn’t known about the birth until the crisis made the news. In time, the infant was placed with his paternal relatives. His grandfather and grandmother were eager to raise him. By the first anniversary of the incident, he was described as healthy and happy.
Alexis’s case moved slowly through the courts through 2022 and into 2023. Her defense attorneys argued she couldn’t get a fair trial in Lea County because of the media coverage and public outrage, and asked to move the trial elsewhere. Judge William Shoebridge denied the request, saying careful juror screening would be enough. As trial approached, her public defender, Ibukun Adepu, signaled a strategy focused on Alexis’s mental state.
The prosecution countered that, whatever her mental state, Alexis made deliberate choices that nearly killed her child. They pointed out that six hours passed between the dump and the rescue, hours she could have told someone or gone back for the baby. She did none of that. That wasn’t a momentary lapse, they argued; it was a course of conduct to permanently get rid of the baby.
The trial began in April 2023 in Lovington, New Mexico. The prosecution played the surveillance video. The three rescuers testified about how they found the baby. Medical experts testified that the hypothermia was severe and that he would likely have died within an hour or two if no one had found him.
Police described the evidence from Alexis’s home and car, including bloodstained clothing and a towel consistent with childbirth. The jury heard excerpts of Alexis’s own interrogation, including her calling the baby “it. ”
The defense didn’t dispute what Alexis did. Instead, they focused on why.
A licensed clinical social worker, Jack Hancock, testified about Alexis’s persistent mental health issues. The defense argued she had undiagnosed bipolar disorder, and that combined with the stress and denial of pregnancy, her actions were an act of desperation, not a calculated attempt at murder. They suggested she may have been in a dissociative state, not fully in control. Her lawyer reminded jurors she was barely 18, a child herself, with no prior criminal history and a bright future ahead.
They read a statement from Martha saying Alexis would never have done this in her right mind. On April 14th, 2023, the jury found Alexis guilty on both counts. She stood weeping as the verdict was read. She was taken into custody.
Sentencing was set for May 1st. The courtroom was packed. Steven addressed the court directly, speaking for his infant son. He described his boy as healthy, loving, and handsome, saying he would never forget what Alexis did, but vowing he would become somebody one day.
Alexis’s father, Domingo, pleaded for mercy, saying if he or her mother had ever had a clue she was pregnant, they would never be in this situation. He said Alexis’s actions were unimaginable and would stay with them forever, but that was not who she is, not how she was raised. Alexis herself was given a chance to speak. She said she was sorry.
She regretted that her baby’s first hours of life were traumatic, that she deprived him of motherly love, that she missed out on his first milestones, and that he would always carry this in the back of his head. She said family was everything to them and she had lost the chance to show her son that love. She hoped that one day, when he was older, he might read about this and understand that she did love him. She told the judge she had been learning coping skills in custody and wanted to continue working on her mental health.
Judge Shoebridge delivered his sentence with a stern demeanor. He acknowledged Alexis’s youth and mental health issues but emphasized the severity of the crime. If not for luck and the grace of God, he said, this could easily have been a murder case. The child would likely have died without the quick actions of those people who found him.
He pointed out that New Mexico had safe haven laws, which Alexis could have used to surrender her baby safely, but she chose not to. He told her that whatever sentence the court imposed, she had given herself a life sentence, and she had given her son that same life sentence, knowing what his own mother did to him. He sentenced Alexis to 18 years, the maximum the charges allowed, then suspended two years, reducing her time behind bars to 16. He cited her age and mental health.
He also ordered two years of supervised probation or parole upon release and recommended continued mental health treatment and educational programs while she was incarcerated. In May 2023, Alexis was remanded to the New Mexico Department of Corrections. But that wasn’t the end. Her legal team filed an appeal on the day of sentencing.
In the fall of 2023, her attorneys asked that she be released from prison while the appeal was being decided. A district judge denied that request. Her lawyers took it to the New Mexico Court of Appeals. On October 18th, 2023, two appellate judges reviewed the case and overturned the lower court’s decision, allowing Alexis to be released on bond under strict conditions.
The appellate judges stated that her appeal raised a substantial question of law likely to result in a reversal or a new trial, and that she was not likely to flee or pose a danger to the community under supervision. By late October 2023, about 18 months after the incident, Alexis was back at her family’s home in Hobbs, wearing an ankle monitor. She couldn’t leave Lea County, couldn’t contact her son or any witnesses, couldn’t drink alcohol, couldn’t possess weapons. As of July 2025, her appeal had not yet been resolved.
In the wake of the incident, New Mexico lawmakers expanded the Safe Haven program, allocating funding for new baby boxes so a mother in crisis could anonymously drop off an infant at a fire station, with climate-controlled boxes that alert medical staff. Hobbs got its own baby box later that year. Public service campaigns were proposed to educate young people about safe haven options. In both similar cases that surfaced in New Mexico, the young mothers pointed to fear of their parents as the reason they did what they did.
The message to parents was simple: keep an open dialogue with your teenagers, so they feel safe coming to you if they find themselves in a crisis. Your teenagers shouldn’t be scared of you.
