Anthony Avalos's mother and her boyfriend were sentenced Tuesday to life in prison after being found guilty in March of murdering the 10-year-old boy in their California home in 2018, in a case of child torture that shocked the country and brought scrutiny. to child protection agencies in Los Angeles.
A Los Angeles County judge found Heather Barron, 33, and her boyfriend Kareem Leiva, 37, guilty of first-degree murder after a trial without a jury.
The death penalty was ruled out despite the objection of the Prosecutor's Office.
The couple was also convicted of
torture and child abuse of Anthony Avalos's brothers
, identified as Destiny, 13, and Rafael, 12.
"Not even animals do what you did"
“Saying these words is very painful,” said his grandmother Concepción Ramírez during the sentencing hearing on Tuesday, “I wonder what my grandson would have been: a firefighter?
Police? Lawyer? Doctor?
Or a social worker to do his job well and not allow injustices like those committed against him?
"In your inability to love you never saw the wonderful being you had as a son," he said, "nor did animals do what you did."
“Five years have passed without my brother, my best friend.
Anthony was everything to me and my family.
He was very special to everyone and unfortunately because of these two monsters he is no longer here, said his sister Destiny.
"I shouldn't have to be here, they two took away my opportunity to lead a normal life as a normal girl," added her sister, who due to her emotion could not continue reading what she had prepared.
“I will never be able to play with my older cousin.
He's not going to teach me how to play baseball.
Heather is a monster,” read her 8-year-old cousin Mathieu.
"Since Anthony's death, my life has never been the same," added her cousin, "I hope this monster pays."
"This is a very emotional case," acknowledged the judge at the beginning of the sentence, who asked for decorum on the part of the public.
"This is the case that has disturbed me the most," said a Los Angeles sheriff's agent, who was the first to see the boy's body.
Anthony Avalos.Telemundo News
"They are little short of monsters"
The Prosecutor's Office insisted in the trial that the death of the minor was a consequence of the cruelty of his mother and her partner.
“They are little short of monsters for what they did.
Both defendants are evil individuals
,” prosecutor Jonathan Hatami said in his closing arguments on February 23.
A team of paramedics found Anthony Avalos without a pulse and brain dead at the house where he lived with his mother, her boyfriend and his older brothers in Lancaster, north of Los Angeles.
His brothers testified during the trial that they saw Leiva take the boy by the ankles and throw him headfirst to the ground twenty times the day before the police were alerted to his death.
Barron and Leiva pleaded not guilty to murder and abusing the woman's two other children.
Both preferred to have the judge, Sam Ohta, issue a sentence rather than face a jury.
The couple has been in pretrial detention without bail since their arrest in 2018. Between them they have 12 children from different relationships, according to the Efe news agency.
The trial for Anthony Avalos presents new details about his death and the abuse he suffered
Feb 24, 202302:22
A life of abuse
Avalos passed away just weeks after finishing fourth grade with excellent grades.
His death uncovered the life of mistreatment he suffered at the hands of his mother and his partner for years.
“He looked dead.
His eyes were sunken.
You could count his ribs, ”said Ronald Watts, one of the firefighters who went to the house after receiving the police alert, at the trial.
The boy's siblings reported in court that they were hungry because they were not given food;
they endured cuts and burns;
they were repeatedly whipped with belts and cables;
they forced them to hit each other;
and they were forced to eat hot sauce or kneel on rice, nails or cement, until they suffered injuries.
Brothers of Anthony Avalos recount the torture to which their parents subjected them
Feb 2, 202300:51
His relatives reported the abuse of which he and his siblings were subjected up to 13 times over four years to the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services, according to official records, but no official removed custody of the mother
. nor did he take them out of the house.
In October 2022, the Los Angeles Board of Supervisors agreed to compensate Avalos' brothers and father with $32 million, after the family denounced the inaction of social workers.
The relatives also reached an economic agreement with the child health and welfare agency Sycamores Child and Family Services, although the agreed amount was not disclosed.
"They tortured him"
“They have the face of pretending they did nothing.
They killed the child, they tortured him," María Barrón, Anthony's aunt, told Telemundo News, "it hurts me a lot to know everything the child went through."
Anthony Avalos.
The Prosecutor's Office assured in the final arguments that
the mother was "the mastermind" of the torture
and
her boyfriend was the one who carried it out.
But Barron's defense argued during the trial that she herself was a victim of domestic violence and presented her as a person unable to protect her children because of the violence she had suffered.
“Every man in her life abused her in one way or another, starting with her stepfather.
This is all she has ever known,” said her attorney, Nancy Sperber.
“She had no power to prevent it.
She had no power to say no,” she claimed.
Leiva's defense recognized on his side the harshness of the episodes to which Avalos and his brothers were subjected, but tried to release him from the responsibility of inflicting the fatal injuries.
Anthony Avalos holds a drawing. Telemundo News
The death of Avalos aroused outrage in Los Angeles due to the similarities with the case of Gabriel Fernández, an 8-year-old boy from Palmdale, also north of Los Angeles, who died in 2013 from the torture to which his mother and his father subjected him. stepfather while the family was under investigation by the Department of Children and Family Services.
The mother was sentenced to life in prison after pleading guilty, while her boyfriend was sentenced to death.