Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

Woman sentenced for leaving newborn to die in hotel toilet

Kristine Sue Westin was unable to rescue her premature baby after giving birth in a toilet in the Lady Luck hotel because she had been abused for years, Westin's mother said after her daughter's sentencing Thursday.

Westin was sentenced to consecutive terms of four to 20 years for child abuse and neglect and one to four years for involuntary manslaughter in connection with the baby's July 1997 death. Chief Deputy District Attorney Doug Herndon said she would serve a minimum of five years in prison.

Westin's mother, Mignon Westin, said the baby's father, Kevin Dale Woo, 35, had continuously beat her daughter for almost eight years and threatened to kill her if she left him. She said he forced Kristine Westin to leave the baby in the toilet when she delivered the three-pound boy.

"He held her down and wouldn't let her look," Mignon Westin said her daughter told her.

Woo had also separated Mignon Westin from her daughter, limiting their interactions to phone calls and letters every couple of months. Mother and daughter reunited for the first time in eight years Wednesday, Mignon Westin said.

Mignon Westin said she knew at the time of the homicide that her daughter was pregnant, and that she had planned to give the baby up for adoption rather than abort the baby as Woo wanted.

"I could hear the love for the baby in her voice and I knew she was going to have a hard time giving it up," Mignon Westin said through tears, sitting outside of District Judge Joseph Bonaventure's courtroom after her daughter was sentenced. "There is no way she would have let the baby drown, but he beat her so badly she had no choice."

Woo, who was also charged with the murder, killed himself in a 30-hour standoff with police in a Seattle hotel six years after the infant's homicide.

Westin's distraught mother said Woo would have killed her daughter too if she had been at the hotel. It was Kristine Westin's arrest for allegedly shoplifting that had led Seattle police to Woo.

Kristine Westin told Bonaventure in court that she had knew she had made bad choices in her life and wanted to learn to make better choices. She also said she had reaccepted God into her life, turned her life around, and wanted to finish her bachelor's degree in environmental sciences. Mignon Westin said her daughter was one class shy of her degree when she ran off with Woo.

"You hear a lot of times where prisoners say they have turned their life around," Mignon Westin said. "Sometimes that's true, sometimes it isn't. In this case it's true. She's going to make it."

Kristine Westin's sentence was part of a plea bargain with the district attorney's office. Herndon said under the law they could have convicted her of either second degree murder or child abuse and neglect, but not both. They also dropped a drug charge against her in exchange for the involuntary manslaughter plea.

Herndon said Westin's prior record and six-year abscondance weighed against her, but that the plea bargain was fair considering the circumstances of the case.

"Did she need to go to prison? Absolutely," Herdon said in a phone interview. "Did she need a murder conviction? No."

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