Crime & Safety

Boyfriend in Dead Baby Case Tells Cops: 'It's Not Me'

A man charged with murdering his girlfriend's baby withstood a lengthy interrogation by detectives and insisted he was innocent.

By Joseph Hosey

A Plainfield man charged with killing his girlfriend's baby endured a lengthy interrogation and insisted he knew nothing about the child's death.

Santos Loza, 33, repeatedly told detectives he had no idea how 8-month-old Kevion Bender suffered broken ribs, a fractured skull and numerous bruises before dying.

Prosecutors played a video of Loza's interrogation during the fifth day of his trial Friday. On the video, Loza said he never struck Kevion. He also said he at no time saw the child's mother, Sandra Sitko, hit the boy.

Sitko testified against Loza Thursday. While on the witness stand she also fended off attacks by defense attorney Joseph "Shark" Lopez, who questioned why she continued having sex with Loza for months after her son's death.

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.

During Loza's interrogation, Joliet police Detective Linda Odom said Sitko had blamed him for Kevion's injuries.

"She says that you did it and she knows it," Odom told Loza. "She says she didn't do it and you're the one who did it."

Loza still denied he was the killer and refused to accuse Sitko.

"I'm saying no, and I'm not saying she did it either," he told the detective. "I don't know why she would say that."

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