Texas man charged with murder after baby stuffed into backpack and left in car for hours

Police in Lubbock have charged a man with capital murder after a 10-month-old girl was stuffed into a backpack and apparently left in a car for hours.

Trevor Marquis Rowe, 27, was taken into custody Tuesday evening in connection with the death of his girlfriend’s daughter, Marion Jester-Montoya, the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal reported.

Rowe is being held at Lubbock County Detention Center with bond set at $2 million. His girlfriend has not been charged in the case.

Rowe had called police just before 5 p.m. Tuesday to report that the infant was not breathing. The girl was rushed to a local hospital, where she was pronounced dead.

According to an arrest warrant obtained by the newspaper, Rowe picked the child up from her mother and took her to his place of work, then “crammed” the baby into a backpack and placed it on his car’s front passenger floorboard.

He later checked on the child, who had escaped the backpack, and placed her back inside. He again returned to check on the child during a lunch break and found her lightly crying, the warrant said.

Rowe then allegedly put the backpack in the trunk of the car and returned to work.

When he checked on the girl once more around 4:50 p.m., he found her pale and unresponsive.

“Trevor Rowe advised he knew that placing a person into a trunk was dangerous to human life,” the newspaper reported the warrant as saying. “(He) advised that placing someone into a backpack was even more dangerous.”

Marion’s death has left her family “devastated,” her biological father told the publication.