ELLINGTON, Conn. (AP) – Hardworking mom Julie Adkins-Gasque never worried when her 19-month-old son, Elijah, sported a fresh bruise when she picked him up at his baby sitter’s apartment.
He just played rough with her sitter’s young son, she thought. And she trusted the sitter, 25-year-old Yalines Torres, a friend who lived in the same Hartford apartment building.
On Thursday, Askins-Gasque was joined by about 50 relatives and friends as she buried her son in a small, snow-covered cemetery in this rural northern Connecticut town, while Torres faced a judge 20 miles away in Hartford to answer to a murder charge.
“What, did he cry too much for her? I don’t know why she would do it,” Adkins-Gasque said after the graveside service. “I’m angry. I’m confused. I’m blank sometimes. I miss my son.”
Police said Elijah died at a hospital Saturday, a day after suffering a severe head injury at Torres’ home. Torres told police the child hit his head on a door frame as she jogged around with him wrapped in a sleeping bag as part of a game.
Hartford Superior Judge Carl Taylor set Torres’ bond at $1 million Thursday and granted Public Defender Claudia Jones’ request to continue a suicide watch on her at the state women’s prison in Niantic.
Torres, who was shackled and dressed in jeans and a black hooded sweatshirt, didn’t speak during her court appearance. She became overwhelmed by emotion at one point and had to sit down.
Jones declined comment after the hearing.
“These are serious charges,” Prosecutor Sandra Tullius said. “The state believes at this time we have a strong case.”
Torres’ next court appearance is Tuesday.
Torres’ friend, Mayra Velazquez of Hartford, who is godmother to Torres’ 3-year-old son, said she was stunned by the arrest.
“She’s a good mother,” Velazquez said through an interpreter at the courthouse. “She takes care of her kids.”
Torres was first arrested on Saturday on charges of risk of injury to a minor and reckless endangerment. She posted bail Tuesday, but Hartford police arrested her again Wednesday night in Hartford on a capital felony charge after reviewing the medical examiner’s report.
The medical examiner’s office ruled the death a homicide and determined the boy died from blunt head trauma. Doctors at the hospital told police that the boy suffered a fractured skull and bleeding from the brain.
Capital felony in Connecticut carries only two possible penalties – death by lethal injection or life in prison with no chance of release. Authorities can seek capital felony charges for several kinds of homicide cases, including when the victims are younger than 16.
Torres called Adkins-Gasque at work Friday after the boy was injured and told her Elijah had a seizure and collapsed during a game of ring-around-the-rosy, according to a police report.
Police interviewed Torres for several hours, and they said she gave conflicting statements about what happened.
First, authorities said, she claimed her son struck him in the head with a xylophone toy. Then she told the ring-around-the-rosy tale. Then she said he fell down backward after she twirled him around at her waist and put him down. She also said he may have hit his head on part of crib while she was doing laundry.
But after more questioning, police said Torres admitted she lied and Elijah was injured in the sleeping bag game.
Going through one doorway, Torres said she lost her balance and the bag struck the door frame twice, police said. She told investigators she heard the boy whimper. When she opened the bag, Elijah was pale and not breathing, according to the police report.
Police said Torres admitted that she had initially lied about the boy’s injuries because she worried people would think she intentionally hurt the boy if she told the truth.
Adkins-Gasque, 23, said Thursday she met Torres two months ago through a friend, and Torres watched Elijah as many as five days a week. She noticed fresh bruises four or five times, but she said Torres explained that Elijah and her son sometimes fought over toys.
“I thought she was letting her son get out of control,” she said. “I thought that’s just the way it was.”
Adkins-Gasque, who also has a 5-year-old son, said she wasn’t suspicious until last Thursday, when Elijah came home with a bruise on his forehead. But she left her son with Torres on Friday because she had to go to her job at fast-food restaurant. That night, Elijah was fatally injured.
She’s glad that her former friend faces a murder charge.
“It lightens my heart a little bit,” Adkins-Gasque said. “I feel that is fair. Hopefully that’s the way it will stay, that she will be charged to the fullest extent of the law.”
AP-ES-01-17-08 1818EST
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