A mother has pleaded guilty to murder and child abuse over the death of her six-year-old son in Arizona.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Elizabeth Archibeque, 26, reached a plea deal with prosecutors this month and could face life in prison under the first-degree murder charge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Her son, Deshaun Martinez, had been locked inside a small bedroom closet without food until he died in March 2020, reported the Arizona Daily Sun.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A post-mortem found the child starved to death.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When he died, he weighed just 8.1kg – which is well below average for his age.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The boy had a “skeletal appearance” because he had almost no fat on his body.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Archibeque was charged along with the boy’s father, Anthony Martinez, and his grandmother, Ann Martinez. The cases were being tried separately.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The boy’s parents initially put their son’s malnourished state down to a medical condition and to taking diet or caffeine pills.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Eventually, they told police they kept Deshaun and his older brother in a closet in their Flagstaff apartment for 16 hours a day and gave them little to eat. The brother survived.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Police said the youngsters were confined there as punishment for stealing food while the parents slept.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The adults told officers that Deshaun had been in the closet for “about a month”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Both Anthony Martinez and Ann Martinez reportedly have previously pleaded not guilty.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A mother has pleaded guilty to murder and child abuse over the death of her six-year-old son in Arizona. Elizabeth Archibeque, 26, reached a plea deal with prosecutors this month and could face life in prison under the first-degree murder charge. Her son, Deshaun Martinez, had been locked inside a small bedroom closet without food […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6896,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[220],"tags":[1369,2240,1305,2716,2715],"class_list":["post-6895","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-guilty","tag-mother","tag-murder","tag-starve-to-death","tag-young-boy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/miaminewsnetwork.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6895","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/miaminewsnetwork.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/miaminewsnetwork.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/miaminewsnetwork.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/miaminewsnetwork.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6895"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/miaminewsnetwork.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6895\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6897,"href":"https:\/\/miaminewsnetwork.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6895\/revisions\/6897"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/miaminewsnetwork.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6896"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/miaminewsnetwork.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6895"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/miaminewsnetwork.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6895"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/miaminewsnetwork.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6895"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}