A mother in Arizona was sentenced to jail for starving her own son that led to his death, authorities revealed.
According to the officials, Elizabeth Archibeque did something terrible to her 6-year-old child, Deshaun Martinez. She allegedly kept Deshaun and his 7-year-old brother locked up in a closet in their apartment in Flagstaff, Arizona, for 16 hours a day.
Authorities also claimed that the children were not given enough food to eat, and this abuse went on for a whole month.
Deshaun was only 18 pounds when he died from starvation.
At first, Archibeque and the boy’s father, Anthony Martinez, lied and said that Deshaun died because of a medical condition and diet pills. However, the tragic truth came out later when the police found out that the parents punished the boys for eating while they were asleep.
When Deshaun was just two weeks old, he had been hospitalized for sepsis and a urinary tract infection, and he would often throw up after feeding.
In addition, doctors told the parents how to help him gain weight, and at the age of 4, he weighed 34 pounds. But then, he started losing weight, and by the time he was 6, he weighed as much as he did when he was just one year old.
During the court hearing on July 27, a police detective named Melissa Seay said that she had never seen anything so horrible in her life.
Deshaun was skin and bones when she found him. The judge sentenced Archibeque to life in prison for her cruel and heartless actions.
“His face was completely sunken in. It was just like a skeleton,” Seay said in a statement.
The boy and his brother were reeked of a “foul, awful smell of urine,” Seay added.
Moreover, Deshaun’s father, Anthony Martinez, and his paternal grandmother, Ann Martinez, have also been charged with murder and child abuse. They pleaded not guilty to the charges.
“A huge part of me died along with my beautiful child,” Archibeque said. “Not a day goes by that I do not grieve … I am so sorry.”
Furthermore, Archibeque’s public defender, Christine Brown argued that Archibeque suffered from mental illness as she was addicted to methamphetamine at birth and had a traumatic upbringing.
