Jury hears police interview with admitted Kennewick killer

Wednesday, Oct. 06, 2010

By Annette Cary, Herald staff writer

KENNEWICK -- Araceli Camacho Gomez fought to get out of the car she was locked in before she was stabbed to death and her baby cut from her womb, said Phiengchai Sisouvanh Synhavong in a police interview in June 2008.

A Benton County Superior Court jury listened Tuesday to a recording of the first 35 minutes of a Kennewick Police Department interview with Sisouvanh Synhavong, who is charged with aggravated first-degree murder.

"I hit her. I stabbed her. This and that," Sisouvanh Synhavong is heard saying. "I don't know what went through my mind."

The interview with Detective Wes Gardner started at 2:05 a.m. after Sisouvanh Synhavong had been released from Kennewick General Hospital after initially claiming she just had a baby.

She told her story to Gardner with little prompting, saying, "I'm willing to confess and do what I have to do, instead of lying, lying, lying and getting smacked in my face at the end."

June 27, 2008, started with the purchase of a burrito and a decision to drive around Pasco, she said.

She had told her family she was pregnant and they were asking about the baby, which had been due nine days ago, she said.

"Everything was going through my mind," she said. "I need to have a baby. I need to have a baby."

When she saw an obviously pregnant Camacho Gomez waiting at a Pasco bus stop with her two children, she stopped and struck up a conversation, she said. Sisouvanh Synhavong offered to give the young mother some baby clothes later that day.

That evening she had trouble finding Camacho Gomez's house and called her from a mini-mart in east Pasco, asking a customer there to interpret for her, she said. The store was so close that Camacho Gomez walked out of her house, still holding her cordless telephone, Sisouvanh Synhavong said.

The young mother willingly got into the back seat of her car, she said.

"At first the killing part never went into my mind," she said.

Sisouvanh Synhavong planned to drive to her home in Kennewick, but halfway across the blue bridge Camacho Gomez "starts freaking out," she said.

She pulled off the road in a turnout just south of the bridge, got out of the car and climbed in the back seat, she said. Camacho Gomez did not speak English and was saying things like "vamonos" and "mi casa," Sisouvanh Synhavong said. The young mother also promised not to call the police, Sisouvanh Synhavong said.

Camacho Gomez began hitting the car window with her cordless phone and Sisouvanh Synhavong told her to stop, saying fixing the window would be very expensive, she said.

Sisouvanh Synhavong said she had the child locks on because she sometimes drove a young relative in the car and both of the women were trapped in the car. Sisouvanh Synhavong said she tried several times to crawl into the front seat so she could drive off, but was so large she couldn't do it.

At one point Camacho Gomez calmed down, Sisouvanh Synhavong said in a sometimes disjointed narrative. But then she freaked out.

"She hit me first," Sisouvanh Synhavong said. The pregnant woman was scratching her, biting her, pulling her hair and twisting her arm," she said.

Sisouvanh Synhavong had a knife in her first aid kit and took it out, she said.

"I just grabbed her," she said. "I did what I did."

Camacho Gomez was still breathing as Sisouvanh Synhavong climbed between the front seats and drove off, she said. But the young mother was "just slowly dying," she said.

In part of the police interview -- particularly as she drew a diagram to show where the turnout was -- Sisouvanh Synhavong sounded cheerful and even animated, but her voice grew soft as she talked about what happened next after she stopped in Columbia Park.

She cut the baby out of Camacho Gomez's womb and dragged her out of the car, Sisouvanh Synhavong said quietly and without further explanation in the part of the interview the jury heard Tuesday.

"Then I called the police officer," she said.

The day in court also included witnesses for the prosecution showing what they said had been found in Sisouvanh Synhavong's purse and recounting what she reportedly said to police, nurses and a doctor before she was interviewed at the Kennewick police station.

Among the contents of her purse entered as evidence was a baby bottle and a suction bulb of the type the prosecution said is used to clear out the airways of newborn babies. The suction bulb had blood on it, but defense attorney Dan Arnold questioned whether the blood could have contaminated the bulb while it was inside the purse.

The purse also had bloody tissue or gauze, mechanics' gloves and a box cutter, according to the prosecution.

Law enforcement officers testified that a knife and a cordless telephone were found in Columbia Park near Camacho Gomez's body.

When Sisouvanh Synhavong arrived at the hospital after telling police she had just had a baby, she was sweaty, bloody and marked with scratches, said nurse Alexis Montgomery. She also had what looked like a bite mark on her abdomen, Montgomery said.

She seemed "very calm for the situation," the nurse said.

In the emergency department, Sisouvanh Synhavong heard a baby crying and wrongly assumed it was the baby she had claimed as her own. She had a contented look and said that was her baby and he was OK, said officer Ryan Kelly, who talked with her at the hospital.

"Don't you think it is more important that the baby is OK than the lady?" Kelly said Sisouvanh Synhavong asked as he drove her to the police station. "If the lady was OK, I could ask her for forgiveness," Kelly remembered her saying.

Sisouvanh Synhavong's lawyers plan an insanity defense. The prosecution will continue to present its case today. Juan Campos Gomez Sr., the husband of Camacho Gomez and father of her children, has attended most of the trial.

From: http://www.tri-cityherald.com/2010/10/06/1197904/jury-hears-police-interview-with.html