Boy, 9, eats cake, handcuffed, beaten to death by relatives
Oriana Garcia (left) is seen in an undated photo provided by the Hagerstown, Maryland, Department of Police. Garcia, 26, the mother of Jack Garcia, and Jacob Barajas (right), 23, the boy’s uncle, were charged Monday, July 13, 2015 with second-degree murder in 9-year-old Jack Garcia’s death. In the middle is Garcia’s boyfriend, Robert Leroy Wilson. AP
HAGERSTOWN, Maryland, United States — A 9-year-old boy who was fatally beaten over a missing birthday cake had been handcuffed for up to three hours a day for a week before the deadly assault, according to court records released Tuesday in Maryland.
A doctor who examined Jack Garcia before the boy died concluded his head injuries and extensive bruising came from numerous beatings and were consistent with torture, police said.
The boy’s mother, Oriana Iris Garcia, 26, approved of her boyfriend and brother handcuffing her son because “she was trying to teach Jack not to steal,” Hagerstown Police Detective Shane Blankenship wrote in charging documents.
The boyfriend, Robert Leroy “Roy” Wilson, 30, also disciplined Jack by slapping him in the head, boxing with him in padded gloves and hitting him in the leg with a bamboo sword, Garcia’s brother Jacob Andrew Barajas told police.
Punished ‘to help Jack focus better’
Barajas, 23, said all three adults also made Jack eat food he had stolen “until he was sick of it,” and “used exercise to help Jack focus better,” the court records say.
They all lived in the apartment where Jack was assaulted June 30. He died July 5.
The documents detail second-degree murder and first-degree child-abuse charges against Garcia and Barajas. They were arrested Monday by police who say they had been preparing to leave town. Bail for each is set at $5 million. Neither has a defense attorney listed in court records.
They told investigators that Wilson inflicted the fatal injuries after Barajas had handcuffed Jack because he was suspected of stealing a cake belonging to Wilson’s 2-year-old daughter.
Wilson is being held on assault and child-abuse charges that were leveled before the boy died. His bail is set at $1 million. Wilson’s public defender, Joshua Street, didn’t immediately return a phone call Tuesday from The Associated Press.
Beaten unconscious
Jack’s uncle told police that after the boy went unconscious from the beating, he placed him in a seated position on the floor and handcuffed him behind his back to a dining-room chair, using a bicycle lock as an additional restraint. Then, after Wilson went to get Garcia from her job at a store, Barajas called the emergency dispatcher to say Jack was having trouble breathing.
When the paramedics arrived, Garcia sent them away, saying the boy was only “congested” and didn’t need medical attention — even though he was still unconscious, police say.
The boy’s mother told police she later became alarmed when the boy started gurgling with every breath, so Wilson called the emergency dispatcher again at 10:37 p.m., more than five hours after the first emergency call.
Bad weather hampers airlift
Paramedics wanted him airlifted to Children’s National Medical Center in Washington but foul weather delayed the flight. He was taken to a local hospital and transferred to the Washington hospital sometime after midnight.
The allegation that Garcia was complicit in Jack’s beating didn’t ring true to her former boyfriend, Daniel Fletcher.
“She was a loving mother,” Fletcher said in an interview outside the apartment.
Fletcher, 35, a market researcher now living in Orem, Utah, said he lived with Garcia and Jack for five years in Arizona and in Goleta, California, before she met Wilson online and moved in late February to Davis’ apartment in Hagerstown.
