Older brother of two children in Pontiac child torture case facing charges
By DeJanay Booth-Singleton
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DETROIT (WWJ) — The older brother of two Pontiac, Michigan, children, who authorities say were starved and tortured, has been arrested and charged.
According to the Oakland County Prosecutor’s Office, 24-year-old Carlos Bazan-Hernandez was charged with two counts of first-degree child abuse and two counts of torture. He is expected to be arraigned on Friday.
Prosecutors charged Bazan-Hernandez, along with 43-year-old Auturo Bazan-Perez and 42-year-old Ducle Bazan, on Tuesday, Nov. 25. Bazan-Hernandez was arrested a day later, at about 2:15 p.m. on Wednesday, according to the Oakland County Sheriff’s Office.
Prosecutors say Bazan-Hernandez and the two children, ages 11 and 9, are Auturo Bazan-Perez’s sons.
“Thanks for the good work and diligence of our team,” Sheriff Michael Bouchard said in a statement. “The third suspect in this horrific case has now been taken into custody and will be facing the full force of the judicial accountability that he deserves.”
Authorities allege that Bazan-Hernandez acted as a “disciplinarian” for the children, who were not allowed to leave their rooms. The sheriff’s office says the boys were taken out of school in September and were only given “sporadic meals of rice.”
Prosecutors say that on Nov. 17, the 9-year-old child was taken to a hospital for a medical condition. The sheriff’s office says the child suffered from liver failure, weighed about 33 pounds and had bruises on his body. He also suffered a cardiac arrest due to malnutrition, the prosecutor’s office says.
The sheriff’s office was notified by hospital staff of the 9-year-old’s condition, and further investigation revealed that the child’s 11-year-old sibling was “severely malnourished,” weighing about 43 pounds. Both boys are now in a hospital and are in stable condition, according to the sheriff’s office.
Investigators found two other children, ages 1 and 4, living in the home and appearing healthy. Those children were removed from the home by Child Protective Services.
This case comes less than a month after 31-year-old Pontiac mother Teriomas Tremice Johnson was charged with allegedly leaving her three children unattended in an apartment without running water and littered with rotten food and human waste. Another mother from Pontiac, 34-year-old Kelli Bryant, is accused of abandoning her children after they were found in February living in what investigators call “deplorable shape.”
“After the first of now three terrible child abuse cases that we’ve had in recent history, I asked the legislature to pass a bill that would close a loophole. Have someone verify what happened to a child that’s been unenrolled, or they want to unenroll before you just unenroll them and then move on,” Bouchard told CBS News Detroit on Tuesday.
Auturo Bazan and Ducle Bazan, who were denied bond, are due back in court on Dec. 4.
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