SAN JOSE \u2014 A woman paid by Santa Clara County to care for her intellectually disabled cousin for over a decade has now been charged with neglecting him so badly that the adult victim had dropped to 75 pounds and was dead for two days before the caregiver finally called for help.<\/p>\n
Enid Acevedo, 69, was charged Friday with one felony count of abuse of a dependent adult resulting in death by a caregiver in connection with the May 17, 2025 discovery of a deceased 40-year-old Joshua Sanchez, according to court records authored by the San Jose Police Department and Santa Clara County District Attorney\u2019s Office.<\/p>\n
A probable cause affidavit submitted with the criminal complaint states that Acevedo had been the sole caregiver to Sanchez and that both lived together at a Mastic Street home \u2014 in San Jose\u2019s Alma neighborhood \u2014 since 2013, and that Acevedo correspondingly received payments from the county.<\/p>\n
Sanchez was described as having a \u201csevere intellectual disability\u201d that necessitated full-time in-home care. Prior to police finding his body, it had been two years since Sanchez had seen a doctor, and he was listed as weighing 120 pounds at that medical visit, SJPD Detective Sgt. Joel Martinez wrote in the affidavit.<\/p>\n
Police and the Santa Clara County Medical Examiner-Coroner\u2019s Office reported that when Sanchez was discovered by police, he had been dead for two days before Acevedo called for medical help, and police reported that Acevedo later said she \u201cdid not believe (Sanchez) needed medical care.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sanchez weighed 75 pounds when he was found, and police immediately suspected neglect.\u00a0That suspicion was confirmed by the Santa Clara County Medical Examiner-Coroner\u2019s Office, which on August 29, 2025, formally concluded that Sanchez died from probable sepsis caused by \u201cacute necrotizing pneumonia\u201d in multiple lobes of his lungs \u201cdue to debility in (the) setting of severe intellectual disability and caregiver neglect.\u201d<\/p>\n
The coroner wrote that other causes of his death included cachexia \u2014 also known as \u201cwasting syndrome,\u201d characterized by significant weight and muscle loss \u2014 with hypernatremic dehydration, and chronic blunt force injuries in varying stages of healing. Police described finding \u201cevidence of a chronic bed-ridden and non-ambulatory status\u201d at the home.<\/p>\n
Homicide detectives were assigned to investigate and eventually identified Acevedo as a suspect in her cousin\u2019s death; Acevedo was arrested March 18 in Gilroy. A Monday police news release listed her as a Gilroy resident, but the criminal complaint and police affidavit described her as a San Jose resident.<\/p>\n
Court records show Acevedo was arraigned in county court Friday and assigned to the county Public Defender\u2019s Office, which did not comment on the case Monday owing to the need to fully receive and review discovery and evidence underpinning the criminal charge. Acevedo is out of jail custody on supervised release.<\/p>\n
The death is being treated as San Jose\u2019s 27th homicide of 2025.<\/p>\n
Anyone with information for the criminal investigation can contact the SJPD homicide unit at 408-277-5283 or email Detective Sgt. Joel Martinez at 4117@sanjoseca.gov<\/a>\u00a0or Detective Melissa Aboud at\u00a04468@sanjoseca.gov<\/a>. Tips can also be left with Silicon Valley Crime Stoppers at 408-947-7867 or at\u00a0siliconvalleycrimestoppers.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SAN JOSE \u2014 A woman paid by Santa Clara County to care for her intellectually disabled cousin for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":233071,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[237,7751,10772,339,7359,105645,134,105646,101701,236,88,90,89,5569],"class_list":["post-233248","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-jose","tag-arrest","tag-caregiver","tag-charge","tag-death","tag-district-attorney","tag-enid-acevedo","tag-homicide","tag-joshua-sanchez","tag-negligence","tag-police","tag-san-jose","tag-san-jose-headlines","tag-san-jose-news","tag-sjpd"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233248","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=233248"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233248\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/233071"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=233248"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=233248"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=233248"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}