MELBOURNE, Fla. — Authorities say a man who was frustrated with his ailing 70-year-old mother bludgeoned her with a hammer, dismembered her body and dumped the remains in a drainage ditch.

Investigators arrested 45-year-old Francis Riccio on Thursday in Brooklyn, N.Y. Police say Riccio moved his family north after Maureen Riccio died in late March. He’s being held without bond in New York on charges of first-degree murder and abuse of a dead body.

Brevard County Sheriff’s Maj. Tod Goodyear told Florida Today (http://bit.ly/18BR9KR ) Maureen Riccio lived with her son, his girlfriend and their three children. He says the children appeared to be unaware of what happened to their grandmother.

The body was found May 14 by an electrical engineer who had stopped on the side of a road.