Awilda Lopez
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Awilda Lopez (born 1966?) gained fame in late 1995 as the mother and killer of her daughter, 6 year-old Elisa Izquierdo.
When Elisa was born addicted to cocaine on February 11, 1989, she was placed in the custody of her father, Gustavo Izquierdo. It has been the source of much debate whether Lopez initially gave up her daughter or whether she voluntarily abandoned her. Lopez, who herself had survived domestic abuse and had witnessed her father attack her mother, first gained custody of Elisa in May 1994, after the child's father succumbed to cancer.
As an adult, Lopez came under the influence of crack cocaine, an addiction that she passed onto Elisa during her pregnancy, and the side effects of which were in part responsible for her behavior toward her daughter and other children. Like famous victims, Nadine Lockwood and Nixzmary Brown, Elisa too had been singled out for abuse among her siblings. Lopez was alleged to have forbidden Elisa to have contact with her other siblings while they ate or played, to have forced her to ingest her own waste, to have mopped the floor with her head and to have cut off the child's hair, and to have kept Elisa confined to their apartment on the Lower East Side of Manhattan while the other children were allowed out to play.
In August 1996, Lopez pled guilty to second degree murder and was sentenced to 15 years to life in prison. During the winter of 2006, when the Nixzmary Brown case made headlines, Lopez expressed her penitence from prison for her role in her own daughter's death.
[edit] Sources
- Various archived articles from The Daily News, The New York Post, and the New York Times
- Van Biema, David. "Abandoned to Her Fate" Time. December 11, 1995
- Peyser, Mark. "The Death of Little Elisa." Newsweek. December 11, 1995
- "Little Girl Lost" Dateline NBC, August 30, 1996
