A California mother was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison on Friday, many years after investigators claimed she put her 11-year-old son in a closet after sedating him before he died in 2016.
Veronica Aguilar, 46, pleaded not guilty to the allegation of causing death by violence on a child. Her sentence was handed down seven years after her son, Yonatan Daniel Aguilar, was discovered dead in a cupboard in his Los Angeles home in August 2016.
According to investigators, Yonatan weighed only 34 pounds at the time of his death and had pressure sores on his body. According to officials, the type of sores is frequently observed in elderly nursing home patients, coma patients, and people who use wheelchairs.
According to City News Service, citing the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner’s Office, the infant died as a result of the effects of various narcotics, as well as dehydration and generalized negligence.
According to court filings, the youngster was held in the closet for three years before his death, according to the Los Angeles Times.
During a three-day preliminary hearing in 2019, police told the Los Angeles Superior Court that the boy looked at least four years younger than his true age when he was discovered, and was described as “a very gaunt, frail-looking child.”
According to NBC, Dr. Janet Arnold-Clark, a child abuse pediatrics specialist, stated at the time that Yonatan “was deprived of food for a very long time,” and that “the only real explanation for that is that he had been malnourished for several years.”
During Aguilar’s recent sentencing, Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Larry Paul Fidler described the case as “tragic,” adding that the youngster must have felt “terror and fear.”
According to Deputy District Attorney Alexander Bott, the mother’s plea “represents a significant and appropriate outcome reflective of the gravity of the crime committed,” and the child’s “life was tragically and unjustly cut short by years of neglect and abuse at the hands of his mother.”
During the 2019 hearing, Det. Sandra Platero of the Los Angeles Police Department stated that Aguilar believed her kid was “pure evil.” At the time, the detective also testified that Aguilar gave the youngster medication to quiet him and made him sleep in a cupboard.
Police stated that the youngster’s stepfather, who had previously been uninformed of the boy’s circumstances, had contacted 911 after discovering the boy had died, claiming that he thought the boy was living in Mexico with a family friend.