Stephanie Alvarado is now convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to 32 years in prison for the 2019 death of her 5-year-old daughter, the result of her accidentally ingesting methamphetamine while her mother and two others were using.
But the cases against the co-defendants in the case, Stephanie’s cousin Daniel Alvarado and friend Bertha Karina Ceballos-Romo, continue to drag on.
Ceballos-Romo, 29, hasn’t appeared in court for months and was deported last fall, but the case against her remains active.
Daniel Alvarado, 28, appeared virtually before 9th District Judge Denise Lynch on Thursday, who, along with Alvarado’s defense counsel, expressed frustration that the case hasn’t moved to the preliminary hearing stage.
Friday 5 March 2021
Language mutates. As society changes, neologisms sprout, new words become codified – app, selfie, meme, troll – and old ones die out. And the rise of new technologies also impacts our non-verbal communication.
Linguistics professor Vyv Evans has suggested that some of our basic hand gestures, or “emblems”, will soon die out due to younger generations not understanding them: things like scribbling on your hand in a restaurant to signal for the bill, or making a winding motion to ask someone to put their car window down.
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In July 2020, TikTok user Daniel Alvarado documented how his kids put their hands flat against their face to denote a phone call, instead of the traditional closed fist with outstretched thumb and pinky. Cue 2.6m views and an internet meltdown.
A sign that times have changed! How cellphone-savvy kids have rejected the traditional camera snap motion when pretending to take a photo and now mime clicking a PHONE instead
TikTok user Heather, 33, asked viewers over age 25 to ask their kids how they would take a picture
Shen then showed two children, born in 2011 and 2004, who both mimed taking a photo with an iPhone by pressing a button with their thumb
The adults she asked did the traditional hand gesture, mimicking holding a box camera up to their eyes and pressing the button with their pointer
The video has been viewed 2.5 million times and has left some people complaining that they feel old and don t like that it changed
Stephanie Alvarado.
Sobbing as she took the stand before Garfield County District Judge Denise Lynch Friday morning, Stephanie Alvarado took full responsibility for her young daughter’s death.
“The day I laid my child to rest, I wanted to go into the ground next to her,” she said in a prepared statement. “I didn’t want to leave her alone in the dirt.”
Alvarado, accused in 2019 of not seeking medical attention for her 5-year-old daughter, Sophia Larson, after she fatally ingested bong water contaminated with methamphetamine, was convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to 32 years in prison. With additional felony charges, Alvarado was originally facing up to 48 years behind bars.