EDITOR’S NOTE: Todd Starnes owns one of the top conservative radio stations in the nation. Click here to download his free app so you can listen to conservative news and talk 24-7.
A suspected MS-13 gang member living in California illegally is set to go on trial for the 2018 slaying of his girlfriends’ 10-year-old son.
Illegal immigrant Kareem Ernesto Leiva, 37, and his American girlfriend, Heather Maxine Barron, 33, are both charged with murder and torture in the death of her son, Anthony Avalos, and child abuse against two other children in the home, court records show.
According to prosecutors, Avalos had been beaten, starved, forced to kneel on rice, force-fed, whipped, and more in a home where he was allegedly subjected to “extreme physical pain and suffering.”
Jonathan Hatami, the lead prosecutor in the Gabriel Fernandez trial, will lead the charges against Leiva and Barron, alleging that the couple whipped the child, poured hot sauce on his face, and hung him upside down. Avalos had been tortured “for almost two weeks until paramedics responded to [the] residence and found Anthony’s lifeless body.”