ONE SICK MOTHER
Qns. woman on run for 8 months after son got fatal dosage hit with slay rap
Michael Guzman, 5, died after mom Phyllis Reinoso (main photo) went out for the night and failed to make sure he got proper dose of his epilepsy meds, officials charged Thursday.
A derelict Queens mom, wearing a smirk and a set of handcuffs after eight months on the lam, was charged with manslaughter in the prescription drug overdose death of her 5-year-old epileptic son, police said Thursday.
Former fugitive Phyllis Reinoso, 31, was marched silently from the 103rd Precinct stationhouse in Queens following her return to the borough where her little boy died in January 2017. The suspect, who fled to Maryland and Alabama while on the run, was held on $1 million cash bond at a brief Queens hearing.
“They finally got her?” the landlord at Reinoso’s old Jamaica home asked the Daily News on Thursday. “I tried calling the police on her. The system failed.”
Reinoso — who once nearly killed little Michael Guzman Jr. by failing to give him prescription anti-seizure meds — gave him just a single dose on the day before he died, according to a criminal complaint. But the boy later died from an “excessively high, fatal dose of phenobarbital," the complaint read.
Reinoso was also charged with assault, reckless endangerment and endangering the welfare of a child, although it was unclear who delivered the deadly dosage of medicine.
She and Michael Guzman Sr. were the subject of 13 child abuse allegations — with eight substantiated by the city Administration for Children’s Services. Four of the cases involved the doomed boy, with two confirmed as abuse.
The mom admits to ordering her 11-year-old daughter to give Michael Jr. his medicine while she was out with the boy’s dad. The complaint charged that Reinoso returned home at 4 a.m. on Jan. 22, 2017, to find the boy asleep and then never checked on him for 12 hours. By then his body was cold and unresponsive and the 5-year-old was declared dead a short time later.
The little boy known as Mikey was “legally prescribed medication, then it morphed into a case where there was neglect in care and an overindulgence, if you will, of the medication prescribed,” said NYPD Chief of Detectives Dermot Shea. “And the child was left outside the care of the parent.”
Officials said it was unclear if the pre-teen sister actually delivered the deadly dosage to her brother or whether the mom was responsible for the overdose either before heading out or after returning home. Either way, the complaint placed the blame directly on Reinoso. “The manner of death is a homicide … resulting from the defendant’s failure to ensure the proper administration of the prescribed medication,” said the complaint.
The enigmatic defendant was arrested July 19 in Atmore, Ala., near the Florida panhandle, and was due back in court Aug 17. Michael Guzman Sr. declined to comment when reached by the Daily News.
Reinoso’s former landlord on 109th Ave. said the mother was abusive to her six kids. A half-dozen allegations involving Mikey’s siblings were also confirmed, largely involving the kids missing meals or school days.
“There was one time the child had a mark on him,” the landlord recalled of Michael Jr. “She told the police, ‘You know how children fight.’ She used to beat them. She never used to give them food. They used to go around and beg for food."
Yet ACS opted to leave the kids in the home where the 5-year-old would die. An agency spokeswoman declinsion ing to comment on its deciat the time of the death.
According to the complaint, Michael Jr. nearly died during an eight-day September 2016 hospital stay where he suffered multiple uncontrollable seizures after levels of his anti-seizure drug dropped dramatically. Reinoso, who took two days to bring her ailing boy to the Children’s Hospital at Montefiore, insisted to a skeptical staff that her son had missed just a single dose of medication. His condition was deemed consistent with Reinoso’s failures to give Michael his medicine and to get help once his condition worsened.