She Threw her Baby off the Balcony to “Get Rid of Her Demons”?!

On an October morning in Galveston, Texas, a passerby made a horrifying discovery: a 17-month-old baby girl lying unresponsive on the sidewalk outside a beachfront hotel. Within minutes, first responders rushed to the scene where they found the little girl alone with no adult in sight. What investigators uncovered next is almost incomprehensible.

Surveillance footage, physical evidence, and witness statements all pointed to one suspect: the very person meant to love and protect this little girl. This case quickly became more than just finding who was responsible. The real question became why? Was this a calculated cold-blooded murder or was this a case of a loving mother suffering a psychotic break? Regardless, it’s hard to understand how someone could act with such cruelty towards such an innocent little girl.

Today, we are going to be discussing the horrifying case of Hannah Youngco. With all of that being said, let’s get into the case. The case begins at 9:45 a.m. on October 23rd, 2024, when the Galveston Police Department received a call from a witness who reported finding a baby lying on the sidewalk unresponsive in front of the beachfront Palms Hotel.

Officers quickly arrived to the scene where they initially saw a white blanket half on the sidewalk and halfway on the street. Next to that blanket, there was a small pool of blood and matted up hair. Wrapped within that blanket was a baby girl who was unresponsive, barely clinging to life with a gash on her forehead and bleeding wounds on her back.

She was quickly loaded into an ambulance and rushed to the nearest hospital where hospital staff tried desperately to save her life. However, it was already too late. The baby’s injuries were too severe, and by 10:34 a.m. the child, who they believed to be around 16 or 17 months old, was pronounced dead.

“Approximately 9:45 a.m. this morning, our dispatch center received a call for service regarding an unresponsive child laying in the roadway in the 3300 block of 59th Street near the seawall. Our officers responded. Patrol officers responded to the scene. The child had signs of life. Galveston Fire Department and Galveston EMS responded quickly, beginning life-saving treatment very quickly in hopes of reviving the child. The child was then transported to University of Texas Medical Branch Trauma Center here on the island. A short time later, unfortunately, the child was declared deceased there at the Trauma Center. The child is confirmed to be an approximately 17-month-old female.”

Immediately after finding the baby, officers appealed to the public for information, hoping to identify her. Turns out the man who found the child had also seen a woman walking away from the scene shortly before he called 911. He gave a description of that woman, whom officers set out to find. And that search, thankfully, didn’t last long. An officer ended up spotting a woman matching the description about half a mile away from the hotel where the baby was found.

She was crying hysterically, and when she spotted the officer, she begged him for help. She said that her daughter might be sick, but couldn’t find her. Again, the officer felt that she matched the description, so it was possible that she was their suspect. So, they took her to the station for further questioning. Officers tried asking the woman for her name, but right away she refused to speak with them and requested a lawyer. She wouldn’t even identify herself.

However, as soon as this woman was taken into custody, her sister showed up to the station. She identified herself as Mercedes Yeonko, and her sister was 30-year-old Chanel Yeonko. She agreed to speak with officers to give them more insight into what was going on. Mercedes told them that Chanel and her 17-month-old daughter, Hanna Yeonko, had come to Galveston from Houston for several days to visit her and her fiancé.

Mercedes, Chanel, and Hanna all shared a room at the Beachfront Palms Hotel before they began checking out that morning, Wednesday, October 23rd. Now, in some reports I saw that there had been some sort of argument between Mercedes and her fiancé. So, just before they finished checking out, Mercedes got a ride to the Victorian, a nearby condo, where she believed her fiancé to be. She wanted to speak with him in private.

But after a while, Chanel showed up to the Victorian. At first, Mercedes said that Chanel showed up with her daughter and was pushing her in a stroller. But after further questioning, she admitted that she didn’t actually see the baby in the stroller, but at the time she had no reason to believe she wasn’t in there.

At the time, Mercedes told Chanel that she couldn’t find her fiancé at the condo, so she was going to go back to the Beachfront Palms Hotel to finish checking out and get their luggage. But Chanel told her not to go back to the hotel. Mercedes found it very odd that Chanel told her that, but when she tried pressing her, Chanel just repeated several times:

“Don’t go back to the hotel.”

After speaking with Mercedes and hearing this very concerning story, officers went back to the Beachfront Palms Hotel to search for evidence. There, they located a trash bag within a bin in the parking garage under the hotel, just west of where baby Hannah was found. Inside the trash bag, they found a key card to the room where Chanel and her baby were staying, a skinning knife with a black handle, plastic beach toys, unused diapers, and an unopened bag of kid snacks.

They also found video footage from the hotel which showed Chanel in the lobby pushing a stroller. At the time, they knew that Hannah was in the stroller because they saw a little foot sticking out and moving around. A short time later, video taken from a second-floor balcony captured what looked like a baby falling from the third floor or higher, landing on the grass before rolling onto the concrete sidewalk where Hannah was later found.

From there, officers went to the Victorian, where they also found Hannah’s empty stroller. So, based on what detectives gathered from Mercedes’ interview as well as that surveillance footage, it appears that shortly after Mercedes left the hotel, Chanel went back through the lobby, back up to their room, where she must have stabbed her baby girl multiple times before going to the third floor and throwing her to the ground.

To note, neither the blanket Hannah was found wrapped in nor the clothes she was wearing had puncture marks through them. So, she was likely stabbed, then was dressed and wrapped up in the blanket. After throwing her baby from the balcony, Chanel then went back down to the hotel lobby and left, meeting her sister at the Victorian pushing an empty stroller.

She spoke with her sister as if nothing happened until Mercedes mentioned going back to the hotel. She told her not to go back though, because she knew what her sister would find: her 17-month-old niece lying on the ground badly injured.

Now, after Hannah’s heartbreaking murder, her body was sent to the medical examiner’s office for an autopsy, and let me just tell you, the findings are horrific. It was found that Hannah was stabbed three times in the back, with one stab wound fracturing a rib. But, that’s not what killed her. She was alive after being stabbed before being thrown off the balcony. When she landed, the blow caused multiple skull fractures. So, her cause of death was determined to be blunt force trauma.

After learning all of this horrifying information, 30-year-old Chanel Yanco was arrested and charged with capital murder for the death of her daughter, 17-month-old Hannah Yanco.

“We’re at the Beachfront Palms Hotel and officers said there were three puncture wounds on the child and video from the second story shows the baby falling from what appears to be the third floor and landing in the grass before she rolled over onto the concrete sidewalk. It’s heartbreaking. It’s devastating to know that someone would do this to a child. Now, I do want to show you some video of Chanel. She was in court earlier this morning where she made her first court appearance. She is 30 years old. Now, this all unfolded yesterday around 9:45. Officers responded to reports of an unattended child near 59th Street and when they came, they found the little girl unresponsive on the pavement. Now, EMS, they rushed her to the trauma center at UTMB. They tried saving her life, but she didn’t make it. Yanco was located just a few blocks away at a restaurant, and now she is facing a capital murder charge.”

From there, she was denied bail and was ordered to await her trial behind bars. But, as both sides began prepping for the trial, Chanel’s defense announced that they would be using an insanity defense, which meant that Chanel needed to undergo psychiatric evaluation.

She was evaluated in January of 2025, and by the following month, it was determined that Chanel would be able to adequately understand the legal process enough to formulate a defense. She was able to give a detailed account of her time in Galveston leading to the death of her child and denied use of drugs and alcohol.

However, she did note a past medical history of head trauma, which caused her periods of forgetfulness. Otherwise though, there was nothing about Chanel’s mental state that indicated she didn’t understand what she did. So, it was determined that she was competent to stand trial, though she continued seeing the psychiatrist throughout that time.

From there, finally, Chanel’s trial for Hana’s murder began in March of 2026. The defense didn’t deny that Chanel was responsible for the murder. Instead, they argued that Chanel was in the grips of intense fear, that 17-month-old Hana was possessed by demons, and believed that stabbing her would release those demons.

Dr. Edward Grippen, a forensic psychologist who evaluated Chanel after Hana’s death, testified at trial. He said that after a few sessions together, Chanel eventually admitted to stabbing Hana to death. She said that she stabbed her three times to release her from her demonic possession, then impulsively threw her off the balcony to send her to heaven and free her from her torment—AKA she stabbed her three times, realized she wasn’t dead yet, so she threw her off the balcony to finish her off.

Chanel told Dr. Grippen that she struggled to tell what was real and what wasn’t. Sometimes she hallucinated and heard voices. For the first few months of their sessions, Chanel talked about Hannah as if she were alive. After throwing her off the balcony, for some time, she actually believed that Hannah would somehow come back to her.

Based on his examinations, Dr. Grippen eventually diagnosed Chanel with major depressive disorder, but stated that due to it being untreated, it may have progressed into psychosis leading to this episode of insanity. He continued that since being imprisoned, she has begun taking antidepressants and antipsychotic medications, so her symptoms have greatly improved.

But the prosecution argued that Chanel knew exactly what she was doing. They discussed the timeline, which is pretty much everything I’ve told you up to this point: how she and Hannah stayed with her sister for a few days before starting the process to check out.

Now, we know the general timeline of her movements after they began the process to check out, but of course investigation continued and they ended up finding additional surveillance video that gave investigators even more disturbing detail into her movements. And of course, this video was played at trial.

As soon as her sister left the hotel, surveillance video showed that Chanel immediately went back up to the hotel room. Once inside, we know that Chanel stabbed Hannah three times. We know this because detectives had found a bloody pillow and towel in the room.

After that, video shows Chanel wandering around various floors of the hotel pushing Hannah in the stroller before she finally takes an elevator up to the top floor. Video then shows as Chanel lifts Hannah from her stroller, swaddles her in two blankets, then chucks her off the edge of the balcony.

Jurors watched multiple angles of that video, all which showed Hannah falling to her death. What I gather from that information is that one, this was premeditated; she specifically waited until her sister left then acted immediately. And two, that after stabbing her daughter and realizing she was still alive, she wandered around trying to figure out what to do before she ultimately decided to throw her off the balcony to make sure she died.

Now, some might argue that this actually proves she was insane, because who on earth would throw a baby off of a balcony if they want to cover up what they did? Wouldn’t it be smarter to hide the body? But just because someone doesn’t choose the smartest way to kill someone doesn’t mean they’re insane. It could mean that they’re freaking out and can’t decide what to do. It can mean that the adrenaline takes over and they just act without thinking much about it. You don’t have to be insane to make impulsive decisions. Or maybe in her head, she was thinking that the fall would somehow mask the stab wounds and that she could claim that her baby fell by accident. Who knows?

At the end of the day, does it really matter why? We know that this mother threw her baby off of a balcony. That’s really all we need to know.

The prosecution stated that immediately after killing her daughter, Chanel took steps to cover her tracks. She called an Uber within 4 minutes with the intention of fleeing Galveston. Now, we know that again, for whatever reason, she saw her sister immediately after the killing. Again, we can’t really explain why. Maybe she was hoping that her sister would give her a ride out of the area before she found out what happened, but realized that Mercedes was in the middle of her own issues, so she had to go another route. We don’t know for sure.

Regardless though, this shows that she at least knew that what she did was wrong enough so that she knew she needed to flee the area. And when she did see her sister, she brought the stroller, and I don’t doubt that she probably put blankets and things in there to make it look like Hannah was still in there.

Now, with this trial, I haven’t been able to find any real argument from the prosecution regarding a motive, but they did reveal that Chanel has prior involvement with Child Protective Services. Back in 2019, Chanel took her 5-month-old infant daughter to the emergency room, reporting that she and the baby’s father found the baby face down in the crib. Her lips were blue and the skin was red. At the time, hospital staff also noted that both Chanel and the father appeared to be under the influence of something and appeared to be in an altered state.

At that time, doctors recommended that the baby be admitted for further testing and overnight observation, but they refused against medical advice. CPS was notified for suspected medical neglect, but the department has not confirmed those allegations. That is all we know about this incident. We don’t know where the baby or father are now. All we know is that it wasn’t Hannah, because the ages don’t match up. What we do know is that she has a history of maybe not taking care of her children the right way.

Now, after both sides presented their evidence, it was time for closing arguments. The prosecution maintained that Chanel murdered her 17-month-old baby girl in cold blood, stating that the one person meant to protect her was responsible for her painful, horrifying death. The defense, on the other hand, said that she was legally insane at the time.

After closing arguments, the jury was sent for deliberations. Now, the jury said that they went into deliberations with an open mind. In fact, they wanted to believe that Chanel was just crazy and that’s why she acted with such cruelty. But at the end of the day, they just did not believe that the defense supported their argument with enough evidence.

So, after less than an hour of discussion, the jury came back with their verdict, finding then 32-year-old Chanel Yengo guilty of capital murder. As a result, she was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. And that is actually where the case ends.

Now, this one was a bit frustrating for me to research, I will admit. I followed this case since the very beginning hoping that more information would come out over time and a little bit did here and there, but even though there was a trial and this case was reported on quite a bit, there was just not a lot to go off of. And so, I still have so many questions, especially regarding why she did this.

I know we will never have the full answer to that question, but there’s a lot that we can use to better understand that we just don’t know still. Like, what did her sister think of her demeanor throughout the trip? Was there anything off? Was there any documented prior use of drugs or alcohol? She denied use of drugs and alcohol, but who knows if that’s actually the truth. Has she had any mental health episodes in the past? What was the status with her other child and the father of that child?

None of these questions have been answered and I just wish I could figure out more, but no matter how hard I dug—and I tell you I dug hard—I just couldn’t find it. So, we are left with this horrific case of a mother throwing her baby girl to her death with no explanation.

As frustrating as it is, what I do know is that Hannah did not deserve this. She was such an adorable innocent baby girl who should be out there living her life full of love, laughter, and warmth. But instead, the one person who could give her that life chose to take her life in the most violent way. And that’s just heartbreaking.