John Jefferson
Left: Denise Balbaneda (Atacosa County Sheriff). Center: Miranda Sipps (Facebook/Denise Balbaneda). Right: Gerald Gonzales (Atacosa County Sheriff).
After a dying 12-year-old junior high school cheerleader with “life-threatening” injuries was given smoothies, as she lay on a “pallet” at her “unkempt” and “untidy” Christine, Texas, home for four days instead of getting the help she desperately needed, her mother and stepdad “basically confessed” and were each charged with a crime by omission, the local sheriff said Wednesday.
Miranda Sipps, a Jourdanton Junior High School student, did not live to see her 13th birthday later in August because her mother, 36-year-old Denise Balbaneda, and stepdad, 40-year-old Gerald Gonzales, waited until Monday, when it was by then already too late, to call 911 to request emergency medical assistance, according to Atascosa County Sheriff David Soward.
The sheriff’s office alleged that on Monday night, at around 8 p.m., Balbaneda called 911 and drove to an intersection to meet EMS. Sipps was still “alive but unconscious,” and she was pronounced dead before 10 p.m., apparently due to “serious life threatening injuries” she sustained the Thursday prior, authorities said.
“The investigation revealed the parents failed to seek medical assistance for the girl, even though she was mentally and physically incapacitated and non-responsive,” the sheriff’s office said in a press release. “It appears the mother finally called 9-1-1 when the girl went into respiratory distress.”
During a subsequent press conference on Wednesday, Soward did not get into specifics about what the injuries entailed or how they occurred, but he said they were “life-threatening,” to the point that they put Sipps “into a state of being unconscious.”
“She was not talking, she basically could flutter her eyes and move her hands a little bit,” the sheriff said. “Over a four-day period, they had her laying on a pallet in the house.”
At this stage of the investigation, the sheriff said, authorities still do not know for certain what caused the injuries, but he did say they had “nothing to do with school” — which didn’t start until Monday and Sipps wasn’t there — that the injuries did not involve broken bones, and that there was reason to believe the suspects tried to avoid getting the girl help so as not to draw attention to themselves.
“Basically, they thought they could nurse her back to health,” Soward said. “We do not think they wanted the attention that this would draw to them if the little girl was injured, which is strangely ironic but that was their line of thinking.”
“I will not, at this point in time, go into detail the injuries — detail on the injuries — or how they happened because I’m not 100 percent sure,” he added, with caution. “And I don’t want to sit up here and tell y’all these injuries happened this way and I find out they happened a different way.”
The sheriff said the mom and stepdad did not get Sipps medical attention but did get her oxygen at one point, and tried to “give her smoothies” with vitamins to bring her back to normal health.
“Somebody that is unconscious is not able to swallow,” the sheriff noted.
Asked by reporters how investigators learned these details, Soward said “both” of the defendants “basically confessed” that they failed to act, explaining the first-degree felony charge of injury to a child causing serious bodily injury by omission.
“They told us how the injuries happened and they told us they failed to act,” he said. “Throw out how the injuries occurred. Throw that out the window. You still have a duty as a parent to provide medical care for a 12-year-old child. That’s what we’re talking about right here.”
“We have a story from the mother, but at this time we’re not prepared to release that,” Soward continued.
The sheriff revealed that “there are other children but not in the home,” and that one of them lives with his biological father in another city.
Asked by a reporter if the suspects showed remorse, the sheriff first said, “a little bit, maybe,” before specifying that Balbaneda didn’t really show any remorse while Gonzales “did exhibit some remorse.”
“Not like you, or I, or any of us probably would,” Soward said. “The mother, as my investigators said, not really at all.”
Asked if the defendants, both U.S. citizens, had a prior criminal record, the sheriff said he hadn’t looked closely at that yet but believed they “both had their issues with the law in the past.”
In a worst case scenario, the sheriff said, they could face murder charges — if the alleged facts end up supporting that, presumably after the autopsy is completed and all of the other evidence is analyzed.
It’s unclear if the defendants have defense lawyers at this time. They were jailed on $200,000 bonds.
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