Police have arrested a woman and her boyfriend in the beating and starvation death of her 8-year-old child, a twin, who weighed less than 30 pounds when she died in 2020, according to court documents.
The surviving twin was in a similar condition, wrote a Houston homicide detective in charging documents.
Soledad Mendoza and boyfriend Ruben Moreno, both 29, were charged last week with capital murder and two counts of injury to a child, causing serious bodily injury, in connection to the death of Melanie Mendoza and her twin’s injuries. The girl who survived went on to tell authorities that the couple would force them into a trash bag in a closet and would keep them there.
At the time of the death, the couple had been dating for a year and Mendoza recently gave birth to another child.
Police were dispatched to a Memorial Hermann hospital in Memorial City four days before Christmas to investigate the suspicious death. Moreno told police that he tried giving CPR to Melanie when he discovered her. The officers saw that Melanie, in the hospital, had bruising on her legs, swollen ankles and “looked to be extremely underweight and small for her age.”
An autopsy revealed “brown fat in her adrenal gland, which is indicative of starvation.” She lacked a metabolic disorder, according to medical records.
The findings at the hospital prompted CPS officials to then remove the remaining children from the couple’s care at their Spring Branch apartment. Other siblings, despite being younger, were physically bigger than the twin girls. The twins were “grossly emaciated and had signs of physical abuse.”
Both girls had signs of multiple rib fractures, some recent, suggesting that the two had repeatedly been beaten. The surviving twin weighed 26 pounds at the time of her hospitalization. She gained 11 pounds in two weeks while at the hospital and out of her mother’s care, court records show.
The neglect is believed to have contributed to their stunted growth, records show.
Police reviewed more medical records for Melanie and found that doctors at medical facilities in San Antonio and Houston repeatedly told Mendoza that the child was underweight for her age.
During a February 2021 interview, the surviving twin disclosed to authorities that her mother had been abusive.
“Can I tell you something,” the girl asked a forensic interviewer, according to court documents. “My mom is being mean to me.”
Mendoza would force her and Melanie into a trash bag and keep them in a closet, she revealed. When they were not kept locked up, they were forced to scavenge for food from a trash can. The other siblings were told not to feed them, police said.
The girl once asked her mother why.
“It’s because you’re ugly and I don’t love you,” she recalled her mother as saying.
One time, the starving twins found some bread and ate it. The girl said Moreno hit both of them with a belt and shoe when he found out.
Police confronted Mendoza about the allegations and she “denied any involvement and blamed the twins for their own condition,” she said.
“They didn’t want to eat and that they would get sick,” investigators wrote Mendoza as saying.
Investigators told Mendoza that the starvation the children suffered stemmed from years of mistreatment.
“I guess I should have done more,” she replied.
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