The hospital cleaner who discovered the lifeless body of Alexee Trevizo’s newborn son says she has been ‘traumatized’ by the bloody scene she encountered after the high school cheerleader secretly gave birth.
Lila Lewis, a housekeeper at Artesia General Hospital, in New Mexico, recalled the horrifying moment she found the 19-year-old’s baby wrapped in a plastic bag discarded in the bottom of a bathroom trash can, in an exclusive interview with DailyMail.com.
The hospital staffer was called to clean the women’s restroom near the emergency room in the early morning hours after Trevizo had quietly gone into labor on January 27.
But before she had even walked in to begin the job, Lewis said, she could see something was horribly wrong.
Lila Lewis told police of the horrifying moment she discovered a dead infant in a trash can when she was called to clean the women’s restroom at the Artesia General Hospital’s emergency room after Alexee Trevizo gave birth on January 27
The high school senior can be seen holding her backside while running to the bathroom just moments before giving birth at Artesia General Hospital on January 27
Alexee Trevizo, 19, has claimed she was not aware that she was pregnant before giving birth to her son
‘I noticed there were bloody footprints outside the door before I entered the bathroom, I didn’t know what to expect when I entered,’ she told DailyMail.com.
‘The bathroom looked like a war zone, blood was everywhere, on the walls, back of the toilet on the floors. It was one of the worst scenes I’ve ever seen in my life.
‘There was blood spatter everywhere, it was like something you would see in a horror movie.
‘When I walked in, I asked myself: “What happened in here?”.’
Lewis – who described the scene to police as ‘a gory, bloody, massacre mess’ – said she wasn’t aware of what had occurred and that she had never heard of Alexee Trevizo until she was interviewed by police.
‘I started wiping down walls, mopping the floor and cleaning the back of the toilet, I’ve never seen so much blood in my life,’ said, Lewis.
‘There was so much blood I had to clean everything twice.’
What happened next is what Lewis said is a memory she’ll never forget. ‘I’m still traumatized by the situation.’
She was cleaning up and had to move a portable, standard size beige plastic trash can that was in the bathroom.
Lewis said the trash bin was a few feet tall. It was when she went to move the bin that she noticed it ‘felt heavier than normal.’
Trevizo and her mother, Rosa Rodriguez, in the hospital on the day she gave birth. They both insisted they did not know she was pregnant when police confronted them about finding the infant’s body in a trash can
Shortly after Trevizo exited the toilet, a cleaner made the shocking discovery of the dead baby in the trashcan
The cleaner who made the horrific discovery is seen being consoled in this picture by two other members of staff, before she was led away from the scene
Lewis said she began to rummage through the bin to see what was making it so hard to move.
She said it’s common for cleaning staff to store new garbage bags at the bottom of the bin so the liners can be easily replaced when the trash is removed.
She initially thought the extra weight was a result of someone storing too many empty liners at the bottom of the can.
But when she reached the bottom, she found a baby wrapped in a clear plastic bag.
She believes Trevizo might have removed the existing trash bag that was in the bin and found a new liner at the bottom to dump the baby in, before burying it and placing the first trash bag over it.
‘For a split second I didn’t realize what I saw, it was a lifeless child face down in a trash bag. I never saw the face of the baby only the back of its head and brown hair.
‘The baby was about 1 ½ ft in length, there wasn’t a lot of blood on the baby, the skin was pink/purple color.
‘I was sickened what I saw, I was in shock, I could barely talk. I told a few nurses there is a baby in the trash.’
‘A nurse grabbed the trash bin with the child still in it to the trauma center where later the baby boy later was pronounced dead.’
Still in shock from what she had just discovered, Lewis left the bathroom to compose herself.
The teenager had been taken to the hospital that night after complaining of back pain, but told staff she was not pregnant and had regular periods, according to the arrest warrant obtained by DailyMail.com
In her interview with police, Lewis described finding ‘a gory, bloody, massacre mess’
‘I’m still suffered from PTSD from what I witnessed. Some days are better than others. I’ll never forget that image of that innocent lifeless child.
‘I wonder what was going through the person’s mind when they decided to wrap a baby in a trash bag and dump it into a can like a piece of garbage.’
Lewis, who said she witnessed her boyfriend shoot himself in the head in 2018, says she now has to deal with the trauma from this incident too.
‘I was traumatized over that for a long time and now this. It’s a lot to handle.’
Trevizo was arrested and charged with murder in May, three and a half months after giving birth, after an autopsy report revealed the baby boy had air in his lungs when he died, suggesting he was alive and breathing when he was born.
According to police reports, the newborn died from ‘entrapment’ – which occurs when an individual is in an airtight container or relatively airtight container, in this case, a tied plastic bag, consumes all of the available oxygen until there is no longer enough oxygen to sustain life.’
The teenager had been taken to the hospital that night after complaining of back pain, according to the arrest warrant obtained by DailyMail.com.
She told nursing staff she was not pregnant, had regular periods and was not sexually active.
Attorneys for the teen say she did not know she was expecting.
But as reported by DailyMail.com, friends and classmates of the high school cheerleader have since come forward to claim that Trevizo knew she was pregnant with her boyfriend Devyn Fierro and had even picked out a name for her son.
Detective’s confirmed ‘Baby Doe’ was cremated in February and his remains were sent to Alexee
Police evidence records list the decadent’s name as ‘Alex Fierro’
Classmates described Alexee, a cheerleader dating fellow senior Devyn Fierro, as ‘a master manipulator to everyone’ who had several friends but very few close ones
‘She named the baby boy, the one she is accused of killing, Alex Fierro,’ said one former friend.
Students who spoke to DailyMail.com asked not to be identified because in Artesia, with its population of just 12,000, ‘everyone knows everyone’.
They said that Alexee claimed that she had put on weight, not because she was expecting but because she had started taking the contraceptive pill.
A friend added: ‘She knew she was pregnant and hid it from almost everyone.
‘She told me she had just gained weight because she was ”on the pill”.’
Classmates said that rumors about her pregnancy started swirling in November last year, when she would have been around seven-months pregnant.
‘Alexee had to have heard the rumors about her, Devyn and the baby, but by the way she acted it’s as if she didn’t have a care in the world,’ said one schoolfriend.
Another friend said Alexee would deny the rumors ‘to anyone who would ask.’
‘A cheerleading coach even asked her if she was expecting and Alexee again blamed her weight gain on taking birth control pills,’ the classmate said.
Classmates at Artesia High School who spoke to DailyMail.com say rumors began to run rampant that Alexee Trevizo (pictured right three weeks before she gave birth) was pregnant, but the 19-year-old brushed them off and blamed her weight gain on the birth control pill
Alexee and boyfriend Devyn Fierro, her baby’s father, at Artesia High School Prom on April 22 – 12 weeks after she gave birth to their newborn son and put him in the trash in a hospital bathroom
‘We didn’t want to get into her business, the last thing you want to ask someone who looks like they’ve gained weight is if they were pregnant,’ said another friend.
But reflecting back, the friends say all last year Alexee wore ‘baggy type’ clothing where in previous years she hadn’t.
Hospital staff, including cleaners who found the lifeless infant in the trashcan after she gave birth, shared harrowing, graphic accounts of what they encountered, in video interviews published earlier this week.
Among the most startling descriptions came from a nursing assistant named only as Lori who told the detectives how it looked as though Alexee had ‘ripped the umbilical cord like an animal’.
According to police records, Alexee’s baby was cremated, and she now has possession of the cremains.
Police evidence documents obtained by DailyMail.com also reveal that the name of the ‘decedent’ is listed as ‘Alex Fierro.’
Alexee is currently on $100,000 bail after a judge allowed her to return to school to graduate. Her next court date is on September 11, 2023.
Devyn Fierro has not been charged.
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Read more at DailyMail.co.uk