Milwaukee mother charged after 16-year-old son dies weighing 42 pounds with 'skeletal structure visible underneath the skin'
MILWAUKEE, WISCONSIN: A Milwaukee woman is facing felony charges after her 16-year-old son who died was found to be "extremely emaciated" and weighed just 42 pounds.
When Iraida Pizzaro-Osario, 32, brought her teenage to the Sixteenth Street Health Center on September 4, he was "unresponsive, had a faint pulse, and appeared extremely emaciated," according to a criminal complaint obtained by Fox6.
Despite the best efforts of clinic personnel and first responders, the 16-year-old died at the health center.
The complaint states that the boy weighed just 42 pounds at the time of his death, which placed him in "the zero percentile on the CDC's growth chart for boys aged 2-20." A detective also noted that the teen's "skeletal structure was visible underneath the skin" and that he was "lacking muscle."
When questioned, Pizzaro-Osario claimed she and her three children had recently come to Wisconsin from Puerto Rico. She said her son "became sick and was not eating," and that she was turned away from a doctor in Puerto Rico because she did not have health insurance.
She told police she drove him to the Sixteenth Health Center on September 4 after finding him unresponsive in his bedroom, and indicated that he suffered from a chromosome disorder, had seizures, epilepsy, and autism. She said his condition impacted his ability to gain weight and claimed he had "never weighed more than 75-80 pounds in his lifetime."
The police interviewed another 18-year-old woman in connection to the case and were told that Pizzaro-Osario had not traveled to Puerto Rico recently and that the 32-year-old had "placed a lock on the outside of [the teen's] door to prevent [him] from leaving his room at night."
When questioned again, the mother is said to have admitted lying, and claimed she did so because she was "scared that child protective services would be called and the defendant's children would be taken away."
She said "never went to Puerto Rico during the summer of 2019," and also confessed to putting a lock on her son's bedroom door to "ensure that [the teen] did not leave his bedroom at night."
She told detectives she fed her son dinner and then locked him in at bedtime, but insisted she opened the door after he fell asleep so she could "hear if [the teen] suffered a seizure."
Pizarro-Osorio was charged with chronic neglect of a child, with the official cause of the teen's death still pending.
She made her first appearance in court on Sunday, September 8, and had her bond set at $35,000. She is due back in court on September 18 for a preliminary hearing.