Raina was unconscious when her father brought her to Mountain View firefighters in 2020.
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. — The murder case against Jesse Manuel Figueroa began at a fire station on July 4, 2020, when he arrived with his unconscious 8-month-old daughter, Raina, and said she had suddenly collapsed.
Nearly six years later, that emergency stop became part of the record behind a 25 years to life prison sentence. A Santa Clara County judge sentenced Figueroa, 36, on May 29 after a jury convicted him of murder earlier in 2026. Prosecutors said the father’s story of a sudden medical collapse fell apart as doctors, investigators and jurors examined the baby’s injuries.
Firefighters rushed Raina from the Mountain View station to Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital Stanford, where doctors worked for days to save her. Figueroa told police he had been taking the baby to a family barbecue when she mysteriously lost consciousness and blood started coming from her nose. That account put the focus on the short span of time before the fire station arrival. Prosecutors said Figueroa had been babysitting Raina and had noticed nothing wrong with her before the collapse he described. The medical record later showed blunt force trauma, not a sudden unexplained illness.
At the hospital, a new sign appeared on Raina’s face. Prosecutors said a bruise developed on her left cheek in the shape and size of an adult hand. The mark became one of the visible pieces of evidence in a case built around internal injuries. An autopsy found brain hemorrhages caused by blunt force trauma to the head and ruled Raina’s death a homicide. The medical examiner concluded the blow was so severe that the baby’s brain shifted within her skull. The District Attorney’s Office said the injury showed that Raina had been struck across the face with great force.
The case did not stay limited to the day of the emergency call. Trial evidence reached backward into the family’s home life and showed a broader pattern of abuse, prosecutors said. Figueroa had been under a restraining order that barred him from unsupervised visits with Raina. Prosecutors said he nevertheless convinced Raina’s mother to let him watch the baby alone so he could take her to the barbecue. Jurors also heard evidence that he had beaten and strangled Raina’s mother and abused the couple’s two other children, who were 2 and 3 at the time. Prosecutors said the children were forced to kneel on rice.
The restraining order became a key fact because it showed Figueroa was not supposed to be alone with the infant when she suffered the fatal injury. Authorities have not publicly described every step that led to Raina being placed in his care that day. The public record says only that he persuaded her mother to allow the unsupervised visit despite the order. That unanswered detail remains part of the story of how a forbidden visit became the setting for a murder. The District Attorney’s Office has not said that anyone other than Figueroa was charged in Raina’s death.
The sentencing hearing turned the case from proof to punishment. District Attorney Jeff Rosen said Raina would have been 6 years old at the time of the sentence. “Raina would have been 6 years old today instead of a name on a murder case,” Rosen said. He said cases involving child murders shake the community because of the brutality toward helpless victims. His statement described the sentence as some measure of justice because Figueroa would not hurt another child. The words came after jurors had already found that the evidence proved murder.
Raina’s grandfather gave the court a different kind of record. In a victim impact statement, he wrote that Raina’s life mattered and that she was not just a name in a case file. He said she was a baby who was deeply loved and should still be alive. The statement placed her short life at the center of a proceeding that also included medical findings, court orders and trial testimony. Prosecutors included the statement in the public sentencing announcement, making it one of the final voices in the official account.
The sentence followed a long path from the fire station to the courtroom. Raina was taken for emergency care in 2020, died days later, and her death was ruled a homicide after autopsy. The investigation then moved through interviews, evidence review and prosecution. A jury convicted Figueroa earlier this year. The judge’s May 29 sentence set the prison term at 25 years to life. No future court date was listed in the public sentencing release, though appeals are common after murder convictions.
The fire station remains the first public point in the timeline, but prosecutors said the crime happened before Figueroa asked firefighters for help. By the end of the case, jurors had accepted the prosecution’s account that Raina died from a violent blow while in her father’s care.
Author note: Last updated June 29, 2026.