Man charged in death of elderly father
Sheriff’s office alleges injuries from long-term abuse
A man is charged with murder after Bernalillo County sheriff’s deputies say he abused his elderly father at the home the two shared for several years in the South Valley, inflicting injuries that eventually led to the elderly man’s death in September.
Joseph Armenta, 54, was booked into the county jail Tuesday on an open count of murder in the death of his father, 85-year-old Jose Armenta. He was released Wednesday.
Armenta’s father died Sept. 10 after being admitted to the emergency room with “shortness of breath.”
Deputies say an autopsy showed several chronic injuries, including “extensive damage” of his internal organs, amid reported abuse from several witnesses in 2018.
Armenta had been previously charged with aggravated battery against a household member after allegedly battering his father in July, and deputies say those injuries led to his eventual death months later.
According to a criminal complaint filed in Metropolitan Court, deputies were called out on July 31 after
Armenta’s father was hospitalized and reported that his son had hit him at their home in the 6200 block of Childs SW, near Coors and Cottonwood Lane.
Rescue crews expressed concern about the father’s “deteriorating physical condition,” and deputies found bruises and abrasions across his body.
A neighbor told deputies the father came to her house that morning “screaming for help” and said Armenta, who had moved into the father’s home four years earlier, “had pushed and hit him again.”
Deputies say Joseph Armenta called the neighbor soon after and told her to “send back the old (expletive).”
Armenta told deputies he and his father had a “love-hate relationship,” and his father was “losing his mind,” before saying the “accusations” his father made had been going on a long time and were going to end up “putting him in jail.”
“(Joseph Armenta) talked about how hard it was ‘dealing with this guy,’” a detective wrote. “(Joseph Armenta) stated he did not push, punch or step on his father.”
According to the complaint, doctors found injuries “common in abused children,” including multiple rib fractures, a spine fracture, a lung laceration and a “large amount of internal bleeding” that had to be “surgically removed.”
Then, on Sept. 10, Joseph Armenta’s daughter called deputies to report her grandfather had died in the hospital. The daughter told police she had left her grandfather at home, and he had sought help from maintenance workers at the apartments due to “shortness of breath.”
Jose Armenta was taken to the hospital, where he died due to “delayed complications from blunt force trauma.”
Deputies say the autopsy found no “natural disease” that would account for his death and instead found multiple rib fractures and lung injuries, that dated back months and possibly years, in different stages of healing.
“The damage was so extensive, however, that Mr. Armenta’s ability to breathe would have been ‘greatly impaired,’” a detective wrote. “It is highly likely that the assault and the current lung findings are directly linked.”