A win for Angel, and for those like him still among us
At last, Angel can rest in peace. The little boy’s murderer is behind bars, and Gov. Doug Ducey and the Legislature have taken action in the hope that never again will a child slip so easily through the state’s fingers and into an oh-so-early grave. “Hopefully, this tips the scales and better balances the right of these defenseless children to live,” Sen. Kate Brophy McGee told me.
Maybe you remember the story of Angel Manuel Rodriguez. In his 19 months of life, he survived two open-heart surgeries while living with foster parents who take in medically fragile children. Three months after the Department of Child Safety sent him to live with his mother and her boyfriend, he was dead.
The boy was born in February 2013 with several serious heart defects, and his foster parents, Vinny and Sarah Montemurro, cared for him for most of his brief life. A pair of surgeries repaired Angel’s heart, and the foster parents told me he was on his way to “a wonderful life” in June 2014, when he was sent to live with his mother and her boyfriend, 18-year-old George Ramon Hernandez Jr. Never mind that just a month earlier, Hernandez had been arrested for choking his stepmother. He got out of jail two days before Angel was sent to live in the apartment Hernandez shared with Angel’s mother and younger brother.
Hernandez pleaded guilty to aggravated assault in September 2014.Twentytwo days later, Angel’s life ended.
Hernandez would later tell Phoenix police that Angel wouldn’t stop crying, so he slammed the boy’s head into a corner of the child’s bed. Then, he had a friend over to play video games. Angel died the following day. In January, Hernandez was sentenced to 25 years in prison. The DCS never explained why it sent the boy to live with a man awaiting trial for domestic violence, or why the child remained even after the man had pleaded guilty. The only logical conclusion: DCS workers didn’t know, because they never checked up on the boyfriend.
DCS Director Greg McKay, who was appointed five months after Angel’s death, quickly issued a directive requiring background checks on all adults living in the home within 10 days of placement. Then he worked with Brophy McGee to cement the requirement into law, to ensure that never again will the DCS leave a child with someone like Hernandez.
Thus comes Senate Bill 1109. The Legislature approved it unanimously, and on March 31, Ducey quietly signed “Angel’s Law.”
“Angel’s story is a heartbreaking tragedy that should never occur,” his spokesman, Daniel Scarpinato, told me. “This law will help ensure we are taking every step possible to place children in safe environments.”
I rarely have much good to say about this Legislature or this governor. But every once in a while, they get one right. This time, they got one right, in the name of a little boy who never had much of a chance. In the knowledge that there are Angels still among us, and they so desperately need our help.