Editor’s note: Reader discretion is advised. Some readers may find the details in this story disturbing. A 36-year-old San Jose father was sentenced Friday to 25 years to life in prison for killing his 8-month-old daughter in 2020, according to the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s O ffice. Jesse Manuel Figueroa hit his daughter, Raina, so hard in her head that her brain shifted in her skull, the district attorney’s office said, adding that evidence presented at trial showed Figueroa also had been physically abusing his girlfriend, Raina’s mother, and their two other young children. “Raina would have been 6 years old today instead of a name on a murder case,” District Attorney Jeff Rosen said in a statement. “These cases break our hearts, at the brutality, at the senselessness, at the sheer loss of an innocent child. Today, we can only feel some sense of justice that this man will never hurt another child.” Figueroa initially brought Raina, who was unconscious, to a Mountain View fire station on July 4, 2020, according to the district attorney’s office. She was later taken to Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital Stanford, where doctors worked on her for days, but she did not survive. Figueroa told police that he was taking Raina to a family barbecue when she mysteriously went unconscious and started to bleed from her nose, the district attorney’s office said. When she was in the hospital, a bruise matching the shape and size of an adult hand developed on her cheek. An autopsy on Raina revealed that she suffered brain hemorrhages caused by blunt force trauma to her head. The strike she suffered “was so hard it caused her brain to dislodge and move to a different part of her head,” the district attorney’s office said, citing the medical examiner. Her death was ruled a homicide. Figueroa was taken to trial earlier this year and found guilty of murder by a jury, the district attorney’s office said. “Raina mattered,” her grandfather wrote in an impact statement. “Her life mattered. She was not just a name in a case file. She was a baby who was deeply loved and who should still be here today.” At the time of Raina’s death, Figueroa was under a restraining order that prohibited him from being with her unsupervised, the district attorney’s office said. Evidence presented during the trial also showed that Figueroa repeatedly beat and strangled his girlfriend and abused their two toddlers, including by forcing them to kneel on rice, according to the district attorney’s office. If you or someone you know is experiencing domestic violence, contact the National Domestic Violence Hotline by calling 1-800-799-SAFE (7233), visiting www.thehotline.org or texting LOVEIS to 22522. ...read more read less