Couple who cruelly tortured and starved 12-year-old son to death gets 65 years in prison
MONROE COUNTY, NEW YORK: Luis Eduardo Posso Jr, a circus promoter, has been handed the maximum sentence of 65 years in prison for the horrific death of his son, Eduardo Posso, 12. The 35-year-old, along with his wife Dayana Median-Flores, 28, tortured and starved Eduardo for months, including shocking him frequently with an electric dog collar, until the boy eventually died in 2019, as previously reported by MEAWW.
Monroe Circuit Judge Christine Talley Haseman awarded the sentence on Thursday, October 6. She held up two photographs of the young Eduardo, one from before the abuse began, and the other that showed him severely malnourished and chained to a bathtub inside a motel. Showing these images to the accused, she told Posso that the 12-year-old "went from this, to this" owing to his neglect, reports Law&Crime. Stepmother Median-Flores was also sentenced to 65 years in prison.
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"Your abuse and torture of Eduardo didn’t stop with withholding food and hydration," said the judge to Posso, adding that his treatment of his 12-year-old son was "calibrated to induce pain and suffering." She further described the crime as "incomprehensible, heinous, and cruel." As per reports, on May 24, 2019, Posso brought his son to the emergency room at IU Health Bloomington Hospital around 2.52 am. The boy was unresponsive and was soon declared dead at 3.05 am.
Describing the condition in which the 12-year-old was brought in, hospital staff told authorities that Eduardo had been "severely emaciated" and had sported "multiple bruises, lacerations and ulcers all over his body in various stages of healing." At the time of his death, the 12-year-old weighed only 50 pounds - the average weight of boys half his age. The Herald-Times further reported that the emergency room physician who treated Eduardo told officials that the boy "reminded him of pictures he had seen of people held in Nazi concentration camps." Coroner Joni Shields ruled the cause of death to be starvation, after autopsy results revealed that the child had not been fed for a long time, in addition to the severe physical abuse he suffered.
The extent of Posso and Median-Flores's crime was alarming. As per a probable cause affidavit by a detective, a message on Posso's phone could be translated to read, "Eduardo was almost out of the chains." The detective added that "during a search of the hotel room, chains, cordage, restraint cuffs, an electric shock dog collar, and padlocks were discovered underneath the box springs of one of the two beds in the room. A wireless surveillance camera was also discovered in the hotel room with the other items mentioned."
Both accused had apps on their phones that allowed them to shock Eduardo through the electric dog collar even when they were not at the motel. Eduardo's 9-year-old sister told police that they even threatened to mete out the same treatment to her if she did not participate in abusing her brother. The disturbing nature of the case prompted many who worked on it to say that it was perhaps the worst they had seen. "There are no words" said Detective Lt Jennifer Allen of Monroe County Sheriff’s Office. Speaking to WTHR, she added, "Everybody involved with this case has been very deeply affected and will be affected until the end of our career, let alone the end of our lives. I mean, there’s really no words for this type of abuse."