For about a year, the frail 4-year-old boy was kept in a back room with the family’s bicycles and the putrid smell of his own urine, prosecutors said in court on Thursday.
His screams of “Let me out” were either ignored or met with a beating, witnesses told police.
When Manuel died, his body allegedly was placed in a playroom, then dumped inside the trunk of a car, and finally, days later, discarded in the basement of a nearby abandoned building, where it was wrapped in a blanket and set on fire Tuesday night.
“Based on their initial observations of the body of the 4-year-old, investigators believed that they had found the body of an infant that was approximately nine months of age,” Cook County assistant state’s attorney Jamie Santini told Cook County Judge Maria Kuriakos Ciesil on Thursday.
The boy’s mother, 27-year-old Alyssa Garcia, along with a 17-year-old boy and another friend of the mother, have been charged with concealing the boy's death.
Garcia’s head hung low at a court hearing Thursday afternoon at the Leighton Criminal Court Building. The judge ordered her held in lieu of $2 million bail. Bail was set at $1 million for the 19-year-old friend Christian Camarena. The 17-year-old is being charged as a juvenile.
The state Department of Children and Family Services had prior contact with Garcia, who recently gave birth to premature twins. In 2012, she was sentenced to 18 months supervision for endangering the life of a child.
Chicago police said they responded to a call of arson at an abandoned building in Englewood late Tuesday. A witness at the scene said that three people had gone into the building with a container of lighter fluid. Police said they took Garcia and the two teens into custody after they saw them running away from the back of the abandoned building.
Firefighters were called to put out the fire in the basement, where they found Manuel’s body in a smoldering blanket and a container of lighter fluid near his body. The cause of death is still under investigation.
Santini spoke in court of the horrific abuse Manuel allegedly endured before his death. He was beaten with a shoe, given a black eye and was “so skinny that his ribs were showing,” Santini said. Witnesses told police they would rarely see him eat, and there were days when he was not fed, Santini said.
Manuel often would hide his feces in the room in fear of Garcia beating him, Santini said. The boy would have to knock on the door to be allowed to go to the bathroom and was often completely naked because he would urinate on himself, Santini said.
“Witness stated that Manny didn’t like being in the back room, and he would scream, ‘let me out,’” Santini said.
DCFS had previously opened two separate investigations into Garcia, at one point taking protective custody of her four children.
Prosecutors said when Garcia saw that her son wasn’t breathing on July 29, she didn’t seek medical attention for him because she feared DCFS would take her kids away again.
One of his siblings checked for a heartbeat and pulse and determined that he had died, Santini said.
Garcia then allegedly called the 17-year-old into the room, and together they washed Manuel’s body, put clothes on him and wrapped him in a blue towel. Then, prosecutors allege, they put him in the playroom and told the other children not to enter.
When they later moved the body to the trunk of the car, Garcia tried to cover up the fetid smell with air fresheners, Santini said.
Investigators said that Garcia admitted to a witness that she planned to burn the body because she didn’t want the other children taken by DCFS. She dropped off her other children with relatives before she, Camarena and the 17-year-old drove about a mile and a half away from her home to the abandoned building and set Manuel’s body on fire, Santini said.
“She stated that she didn’t call the police after finding the four-year-old body in the back room where he was kept because she didn’t want DCFS involved,” Santini said.
Candice Perez, who is the mother of Camarena and a neighbor of Garcia’s, said she and her son tried to help the children.
“We have brought those kids to our house, we have fed them, we were there for them,” Perez said. “Just because they weren’t our kids and just because they weren’t related to us, we treated them the same way we would any of our other kids. Even the little boy.”
Perez said she took pictures of Manuel’s legs and body and wishes that she had called DCFS earlier.
“We’re just as guilty as anybody else because had I called DCFS, would this be happening right now? Probably not,” she said. “But I was thinking about the kids and didn’t want them all to be taken. But I should have. I should have made a selfish decision and said, ‘you know what? They all got to go,’ because ultimately, would this be happening?”
DCFS, which is investigating the boy's death, was in contact with Garcia as recently as February when it investigated an allegation of abuse of an older child, DCFS spokeswoman Veronica Resa said in a statement. That allegation was determined to be unfounded.
A 2012 allegation of neglect was indicated, Resa said. At that time, DCFS took protective custody of the mother’s four children, including Manuel. The children were placed in foster care while Garcia worked with DCFS and completed parenting classes. DCFS released the four children back into Garcia’s care last year after she “complied with all DCFS requests and terms,” Resa said.
After Manuel’s death this week, DCFS took custody of his five siblings, including the twins, who remain in the hospital for monitoring, officials said. The children, who range in age from 10 to newborns, are all reported to be in good condition, Resa said.
Garcia, Camarena and the 17-year-old also were charged with attempted residential arson. Police said other charges could be filed after the Cook County medical examiner's office determines how the boy died.