An upstate New York woman has been arrested after she allegedly kept her boyfriend’s 7-year-old son locked in a room and starved him to death, prosecutors said.
Leticia Bravo, 39, of Newburgh, faces a second-degree murder charge in the starvation death of her boyfriend Arturo Cuacuas’ son Peter Cuacuas, the Orange County District Attorney’s Office said Friday.
Prosecutors allege that Bravo had the boy at her apartment every day except Saturday when Bravo and Peter would stay with his father.
She allegedly kept Peter locked in a bedroom “behind a door that locked from the outside,” prosecutors said.
While in her care in January, he stopped logging online for his virtual classes, prosecutors said.
Leticia Bravo allegedly locked 7-year-old Peter Cuacuas in a bedroom until he starved to death, according to authorities.FacebookBravo brought the boy’s lifeless body on Feb. 10 to St. Luke’s Hospital in Newburgh, where the boy was later pronounced dead.
An autopsy determined that he was 37 pounds at the time of his death and had died of malnutrition.
“It is unthinkable that someone would accept the responsibility of caring for a child and then deny that child the basic necessities of life,” District Attorney David Hoovler said. “It is truly disturbing how this child was kept hidden from school authorities before he died.”
Bravo was arrested Thursday on charges of first- and second-degree manslaughter in addition to the murder count, prosecutors said.
Cuacuas, the boy’s father and Bravo’s boyfriend, was also charged last week with criminally negligent homicide.
