Los Angeles: a couple is sentenced for torturing and killing their 4-year-old son

A Latin couple The Angels was sentenced this Tuesday to spend decades in prison after pleading no contest to charges of torture and murder of her 4-year-old son in July 2019.

José María Cuatro32 years old, was sentenced to 32 years in prison, and Ursula Elaine Juárez30, must spend 22 years in prison for the death of his son, Noah Four.

Initially the couple, who lived in Palmdale northwest of The Angels had pleaded not guilty to the death of the 4-year-old boy.

The minor was urgently hospitalized on July 5, 2019 after a call made by his parents to the emergency number, in which they indicated that the child was drowning in the pool of the apartment complex where they lived.

Hospital staff, however, found signs of trauma in the minor, who died the next morning, prompting the start of an investigation by the hospital. Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department (LASD, in English) and that custody of three other children was taken away from the couple.

The indictment also charged the couple with torturing the minor over a period of four months, beginning in April of the previous year.

Maggie Hernandez the minor’s aunt, said this Tuesday in court that the father is “an evil monster”. “I hope you and Úrsula never get out of prison”, he added, according to information cited by FOX 11.

In a written statement, Evangelina Hernandez the boy’s great-grandmother, said Juarez had told her at one point that she didn’t like the boy.

In 2020, Hernández filed a lawsuit against Los Angeles County alleging that the child’s death occurred after multiple reports of abuse had already been filed with the Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS, in English).

In Los Angeles there have already been several similar cases of children dying due to abuse by their parents or legal guardians.

Also in Palmdale, in May 2013, the minor died Gabriel Fernandez, 8 years old, for abuse and torture. Her mother, Pearl Sinthia Fernández was sentenced to life imprisonment for the death of the child, and the woman’s boyfriend, Isauro Aguirre faces the death penalty for murder.

In the neighboring city of Lancaster on June 20, 2018, he was found unconscious in the apartment of his mother and her boyfriend. Anthony Ávalos, 10 years old, who died the next day in the hospital.