A woman was charged with murder in the fatal beating of her 11-year-old daughter, who had recently arrived from Mexico to live with her. The Daily News reports that Florencia Vazquez cried out in Spanish, "I didn't kill her!" when she was led from the 75th Precinct.
The body of Alejandra Vazquez found on Sunday in a Brooklyn apartment. Her mother had allegedly confessed to police that she beat the girl on Thursday night, leaving her so injured that Alejandra never left the bed, dying sometime between then and Sunday. The ME's office "found blunt-force trauma" to the girl's head, torso and extremities, according to the Post. According to police, Vazquez blamed her anger at Alejandra on her hatred of the girls' father in Mexico. Vazquez's live-in boyfriend, Andres Pavon, was charged with manslaughter.
The NY Times finds that Alejandra was "invisible" since arriving in the U.S. a month ago: She was "never enrolled in school, and unseen by child-welfare officials who visited her family’s apartment, even as she suffered repeated abuse, medical records and interviews showed." Alejandra's older sister, Imelda, had moved from Mexico to Brooklyn last year, but ran away in January, claiming her mother beat her. Pavon's relatives told the Times the couple lived with Pavon's aunt and uncle in Borough Park for a time before finding their own apartment (with a sting in the shelter system); another relative said they were hardworking.
