 Erika Mendieta, 33, who has been charged with second-degree murder in the beating death of her toddler, Emmily Lucas, walks outside a Toronto courthouse with lawyer Robert Richardson. (Sun Media/Jack Boland, file)
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TORONTO -- A weeping Downsview mother appears to be confessing to the alleged brutal beating death of her toddler, Emmily Lucas, in a bugged conversation played at her murder trial yesterday.
"I didn't want her to die," a distraught Erika Mendieta is heard saying to her live-in boyfriend Johnny Bermudez at their Keele St. home in March 2005.
"I did it. I did it," sobbed Mendieta. "I didn't want her to die."
Later in the 34-minute conversation, Bermudez said to Mendieta, "People say that I did something. Shut up, shut up. Erika, you think I did something to your little girl."
"(Inaudible) I killed her myself," replied the emotional Mendieta.
Toronto Police surreptitiously placed probes inside Mendieta's Keele St.-Hwy 401 area home and wiretapped her phones while investigating her daughter's death. Most of those intercepted conversations were played in court yesterday.
Mendieta, 33, has pleaded not guilty to second-degree murder in connection with the November 2003 death of her 2 1/2-year-old daughter.
Defence lawyers Robin Parker and Robert Richardson claim their client is saying, "I didn't, I didn't, I didn't."
The defence also asserts Mendieta said: "I don't know. ... I wasn't even there. I killed her myself."
She appears to be accepting responsibility for not being there for the child at the time, but not for the infliction of injuries. Justice Todd Ducharme instructed the jury members they must decide based on what they hear on the tape, not on the transcripts of the intercepts what the accused is actually saying.
The trial continues today.
