Santa Clarita / Antelope Valley : Hearing Is Delayed in Baby’s Death : Crime: The defendant is given time to consider a plea bargain offer. He is accused of fatally shaking his girlfriend’s infant daughter.

LANCASTER —  A preliminary hearing for a man accused of murdering his girlfriend’s infant daughter--one in a series of Antelope Valley child abuse homicides--was postponed Tuesday to give the defendant time to consider a plea bargain that would settle the case.

Peter Alvarez, 23, of Lancaster reportedly would face a long prison sentence--although less likely than if convicted of murder--if he agrees to admit guilt under the terms of an unspecified offer from the district attorney’s office.

Antelope Municipal Judge Ian Grant delayed Alvarez’s preliminary hearing to Tuesday to give him time to consider the offer. Alvarez is charged with murder and child abuse in the July 12, 1992, violent shaking death of 6-month-old Karanina Hernandez.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Kelly Cromer and Deputy Public Defender Richard Guluzza sought the delay after privately discussing the possible plea bargain. Neither would reveal the details of the offer.

Alvarez said nothing in court Tuesday. But he did wink at Kathleen Kitchen, the mother of the child who is now his wife, as she sat in the front row of court. The couple married after the child’s death. Alvarez remained in custody Tuesday in lieu of $1-million bail.

The county coroner’s office concluded that the child’s death was a homicide caused by shaken infant syndrome, a violent shaking that causes brain hemorrhaging. The child died two days after she was stricken while in Alvarez’s care at the couple’s Lancaster apartment.

The child’s death was the seventh and last in a string of Antelope Valley child abuse homicides that occurred from mid-1991 to mid-1992. All the defendants in those cases either have been convicted and sentenced on various charges or are awaiting trial.