FROM BAD TO WORSE
Autopsy shows twoyear-old murder victim was also sexually assaulted, mother’s boyfriend faces additional charges >>
TRENTON >> The city man charged with burning, beating and suffocating his girlfriend’s 2-year-old daughter to death also sexually assaulted her prosecutors alleged in a bombshell reveal Friday.
Maison Andres Torres, 25, of Trenton, was initially charged with first-degree murder and second-degree endangering the welfare of a child.
He now faces additional count counts of first-degree aggravated sexual assault, second-degree sexual assault and second-degree endangering the welfare of a child based on findings of an autopsy conducted on 28-month-old Victoria Merino-Rodriguez.
The Middlesex County Medical Examiner’s Office performed the autopsy Thursday and ruled her cause of death as “homicidal violence,” the prosecutor’s office said in a statement.
Torres, who is locked up at the county jail, faces a detention hearing next week.
Prosecutors want to keep him in jail until trial after police found the girl not breathing after responding to an emergency call at a home on the 1500 block of Chestnut Avenue. Police received an emergency call from someone who told them the child fell down steps and was not breathing.
Authorities suspected early on that Merino-Rodriguez, the city’s eighth homicide victim of the year. experienced abuse after police noticed what appeared to be old injuries, including burns and bruises on the child’s body, according to sources.
Prosecutors say Torres “caused Lia’s death by burning her with scalding water, striking her with his fists and suffocating her with his hands.”
Merino-Rodriguez was pronounced dead shortly after arriving at Capital Health Regional Medical Center.
Paramedics were already working to revive the baby once Trenton Police Sgt. Anthony Manzo arrived.
Manzo relayed to dispatch that it appeared that rigor mortis had already started to set in, suggesting the child had been dead for some time, according to a dispatch report obtained by The Trentonian.