A 9-Year-old was found lying in a Meridian apartment on Tuesday with no heartbeat, covered in bruises and vomit, suffered months of “horrific” torture at the hands of his father and stepmother, a prosecutor said.
The 9-year-old, identified as Emrik Osuna, was found dead in the pediatric ICU at St Luke’s hours later.
Idaho’s prosecutors have charged the stepmother with the murder of 9-year-old Emrik Osuna, and father of the child with felony injury after police say that Emrik was discovered starved and covered in bruises in the family’s home earlier this week.
Emrik was not attending school and had no escape from the abuse of his stepmother.
“Due to COVID, she’s been working from home and since (Emrik) was not in school, she essentially had access to him all day long,” Prosecutor Tamara Kelly said in the court.
According to the prosecutor the stepmother, Monique admitted that she had kicked the boy in the groin and beaten him with a wooden spoon, a backscratcher, a belt, and a frying pan, later switching belt with a dog leash because the leash was “heavier.”
The married mother of four tortured Emrik by locking him in a closet at night and feeding him nothing but only rice and water for weeks and made him do strenuous physical exercise as a punishment, while she was working.
According to the prosecutors, she only allowed him to stop when she took a break from work, as long as she was working Emrik was forced to do jumping jacks and wall sits for long periods of time.
The boy’s father, Erik Osuna was also aware of the abuse but did nothing to stop it.
“He admitted he did nothing to save his son, “Kelly said.
Erik is not accused of the murder but is charged with the felony injury to a child, destruction of evidence and infliction of great bodily injury.
The prosecution said that after calling 911, Erick took down nanny cameras inside the house and gave them to someone else to hide, police have successfully recovered those cameras.
There is evidence that the couple has waited for more than four hours to seek help as Emrik lay dying, Kelly said.
According to investigators, on Tuesday around 5 PM, Erik texted Monique telling her that they needed to take Emrik to the hospital, he knew that the boy was badly hurt and told her he is scared, “I know you are scared, I am too.”
But they called 911 at 9:40 and reported that their child is not breathing. Emergency responders found the boy with no heartbeat, they performed CPR on the 9-year-old and rushed him to St. Luke’s where he was later pronounced dead.
Kelly said in court that Emrik was badly dehydrated and malnourished, and had numerous injuries all over his body.
“Some of the bruises were extremely large and essentially covered the back of his body.”
The couple’s three other children, ages nine, four, and four-month were removed from the home and placed in the custody of Idaho Health and Welfare.
“Those children are witnesses and by the nature of the abuse, are in danger if [Monique Osuna] had access to those children.”
The prosecutor asked the judge to keep the couple in jail and away from their children, and bar them from having any contact with surviving children.
Kelly argued that Erik Osuna should be considered a “flight risk,” because he is an undocumented immigrant wand has few family ties or connection to Idaho.
The Judge, Dale ultimately set bond for the couple at $2 million each and granted a no-contact order with all three surviving children.
The parents are due to appear in court for their preliminary hearing on September 17.
