Affidavit reveals a pattern of violent discipline investigators say ended with fatal internal injuries.
GRAND PRAIRIE, Texas — Newly filed criminal affidavits reveal disturbing details about the final hours of a one-year-old boy who died early Friday inside a Grand Prairie home — and led to the arrest of his mother and her boyfriend on first-degree felony charges.
According to the documents, officers were called around 12:08 a.m. to a home on Huddleston Drive for a CPR-in-progress.
Police wrote they found the child unconscious, not breathing, and with bruising on his face. Paramedics rushed him to Children’s Medical Center in Dallas, where he was pronounced dead around 2:04 a.m
Statements from the child’s mother
In an interview with detectives, the child’s mother — Susaneth Pazarez-Nunez, 20 — said she and her boyfriend, Fernando Vega Diaz, 23, had been living together in the home since late October.
She told investigators she noticed her son was in discomfort and had an inflamed torso, so she did not sleep the night before because she was afraid for the child. Pazarez-Nunez then told officers that around midnight, she noticed the child’s breathing was abnormal, and his lips began to turn blue.
Pazarez-Nunez told detectives that Vega Diaz began abusing the child once they started living together and had witnessed him “smothering the child’s mouth and nose with his hand and blanket causing difficulty breathing.”
She also said she witnessed him choking the child with a hand around his neck, biting him on the arm, and hitting him in the face and abdomen, leaving visible marks.
She told investigators she tried to intervene but was also physically assaulted by Vega Diaz and feared reporting the abuse to police.
Statements from the boyfriend
According to the affidavits, Vega Diaz waived his Miranda rights and admitted to several acts of violence.
Detectives wrote he told them he slapped the child’s face, covered his mouth with a hand or blanket “because he was screaming,” choked him with both hands, struck him with a cable, bit him on the arm, and hit him on the back and chest.
Most recently, he said he delivered what he called a “coscorron” — a knock to the head — before hitting the child in the chest and choking him on the bed.
He told investigators the abuse happened because the child would not stop crying or yelling.
Autopsy findings
Detectives later attended the child’s autopsy at the Dallas County Medical Examiner’s Office.
There, they learned the boy had contusions to his heart and lungs, a lacerated liver with a detached portion, and roughly 100 milliliters of blood pooled inside his abdominal cavity.
The affidavit also notes injury to the diaphragm and fatty tissue along the large intestine. Investigators wrote that the trauma was consistent with “serious bodily injury.”
Both Pazarez-Nunez and Vega Diaz were arrested on Friday and charged with Injury to a Child Causing Death, a first-degree felony.
Grand Prairie Police say the investigation remains active and that both suspects are in the Grand Prairie Jail with immigration detainers.