Baby Murder Case ‘Like a Piece of Swiss Cheese’: Shark

By Joseph Hosey

An lawyer for a Plainfield man charged with murdering his girlfriend's baby attacked the child's mother for continuing their sexual relationship for months after the killing.

"You're going to have an orgasm while looking at the man who killed your baby?" attorney Joseph "Shark" Lopez asked the jury in his closing argument Tuesday morning.

The mother, Sandra Sitko, had testified during the trial that she continued her relationship with 33-year-old Santos Loza in hopes of figuring out how her 8-month-old baby, Kevion Bender, died.

"I'm going to crack the case by having sex with Santos," Lopez scoffed. "Are you kidding me? Really?"

Loza was arrested in August 2010, nearly two years after Kevion died. Loza and Sitko were the only two adults present in Loza's townhouse the night before Kevion was found lifeless on the floor where he had been put to sleep.

Kevion suffered broken ribs, a fractured skull and numerous bruises before dying.

Loza and Sitko met on the Internet less than three months before Kevion was killed. After the meeting, Sitko traveled from her home in West Chicago to where Loza was living in Joliet about three nights a week to have sex with him. She would bring along both Kevion and her older son, Dillon, on her trips to Loza's place.

Loza moved to Plainfield prior to his arrest.

Prosecutors Derek Ewanic and Chris Koch told the jury that the evidence pointed to Loza as the only person with the opportunity to kill Kevion and that he did it during the seven hours he was alone babysitting the child.

"Santos Loza was in over his head," Ewanic said. The baby was crying and he was frustrated. The baby continued crying and his frustration grew."

Ewanic said Loza ultimately "lost it" and severely battered the baby.

"Do you think that shut Kevion up?" Ewanic asked the jury. "It probably made him cry even more."

Kevion stopped crying after Loza fractured his skull, Ewanic said. Loza then laid the baby on a blanket and "watched the World Series."

Lopez said no one testified to ever seeing Loza strike Kevion and that the prosecution's expert witnesses failed to pinpoint who killed the baby. He also said there were inconsistencies and logical gaps in Sitko's version of events.

"Common sense tells you you don't have sex with someone you think killed your family member," Lopez said.

"It's like s piece of Swiss cheese, this case," he told the jury. "When you open it up, it's got a million holes in it."

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