OAKLAND, Calif. -- A 19-year-old pregnant woman from Oakland was arraigned Friday on a murder charge for allegedly strangling her two-year-old daughter to death on Tuesday in a fit of rage, authorities said.

Tiffany Lopez, who was dressed in red jail clothes and was brought into court in a wheelchair, nodded her head to indicate that she understood when Alameda County Superior Court Judge Robert McGuiness read the charge against her and told her he is referring her to the public defender's office to see if someone there will represent her.

McGuiness ordered Lopez, who is being held without bail at the Santa Rita Jail in Dublin, to return to court at 2 p.m. Monday to finalize her legal representation and possibly enter a plea.

About eight family members and friends of Lopez attended the brief hearing Friday but they declined to talk to reporters.

Oakland police spokesman Jeff Thomason said their department received a 911 call at 4:30 p.m. Tuesday reporting that Lopez's daughter, Kamilah Russell was not breathing. Kamilah was with Lopez at the apartment in the 2800 block of High Street where they lived with Russell's father, Joseph Russell Jr., who wasn't at home at the time.

Tom Rogers, chief deputy district attorney for Alameda County, said Friday that Lopez admitted that she smothered the girl because she could not tolerate her crying.

Kamilah was taken to Children's Hospital in Oakland, where she was pronounced dead at 5:35 p.m. Tuesday. Oakland police haven't disclosed her cause of death.

Lopez was arrested at 2:03 a.m. on Wednesday after being interviewed by police, according to Thomason.

Oakland police spokeswoman Holly Joshi said Lopez moved to Oakland from San Mateo about three weeks ago and is three months pregnant.

On Thursday, Joseph Russell, Jr. said in an exclusive interview with KTVU that he received a phone call from Lopez Wednesday night, detailing how the girl was killed.

“She told me that she put her hand over her face and held it there,” Russell said, “and she stopped breathing and fell to the floor. Then she started pumping her chest, and she wasn’t coming back.”

Russell said that Lopez expressed no sign of remorse during the conversation.

“She didn’t sound like she was just devastated, or like she was in a, you know, in a moment that a person would really just break down and really just wanted to die like I do,” he said.

Earlier Thursday, the mother of Tiffany Lopez said calls to police to get help for her mentally ill daughter went unanswered in the months leading up to the tragedy.

Linda Lopez told KTVU that she called San Mateo police 38 times and informed child protective services that her daughter’s children were in jeopardy as the young lady reeled out of control due to mental illness.

“This could have been prevented if the police and CPS had done their job right,” she said. “If they would have listened to me, my granddaughter would not be dead right now. It’s not all my daughter’s fault.”

Joseph Russell said that those words will do nothing to bring his daughter back.

“Whatever she’s talking about, it still remains the fact that her daughter murdered my daughter, and that my daughter is gone,” he said.

“She could have called me,” he said. “I would have came. I would have came home.”

According to San Mateo County Chief Deputy District Attorney Steve Wagstaffe, Lopez also faces two counts of misdemeanor child endangerment and one count of misdemeanor interfering with a police officer during the performance of his duties in connection with an incident in San Mateo on Dec. 24.

Wagstaffe said the alleged victims in the incident were Lopez's 11-year-old brother and a daughter who was 4 months old at the time.