A bedridden 10-year-old boy with a feeding tube apparently starved to death after his troubled mother — who faced several city Administration for Children’s Services cases — fatally overdosed in their Bronx apartment, leaving him alone without help, law-enforcement sources said Thursday.
The pair’s decomposing bodies were found late Wednesday by NYPD officers responding to a complaint about a foul odor emanating from an apartment inside the Marble Hill NYCHA complex along Broadway, authorities said.
The mother, 39, had been investigated by ACS officials for abuse and neglect – and at one point had the boy taken from her care, before he was returned, the sources said.
The prospect that the heartrending tragedy could have been avoided if not for a massive ACS mistake angered several sources and elected officials.
“If you investigate a parent and return a child who later dies, that is a crime and someone needs to be held accountable,” an investigator raged to The Post.
“You can’t hide behind bureaucracy: ACS needs a total overhaul. This happens too many times, and one time is too much because we are talking about defenseless children.”
Sources said it preliminarily appeared that the mother died of a drug overdose inside the 5240 Broadway apartment she shared with her son, who had special needs.
The boy, who was on a feeding tube and appeared to be bedridden, potentially starved because no one could take care of him, sources said.
The tragic discovery also wasn’t the only child death Wednesday night in the Bronx that involved a family under ACS scrutiny.
An 11-month-girl – Jazeli Mirabel – was found drowned in a bathtub inside a West Farms road apartment after her mother, 30, called 911, sources said.
The mother gave different stories to 911 operators, doctors and NYPD officers about what happened to Mirabel, who died at Lincoln Hospital, according to sources.
ACS officials had investigated cases against the woman, sources said. Mirabel’s father also had an open ACS case, according to sources.
It’s not clear where either of them were at the time of the baby’s death.
Medical examiners were scheduled to conduct autopsies on Mirabel, as well as the bedridden boy and his mother, on Thursday, officials said.
“ACS workers are overworked, they have too many cases and some cases get short shrift, however, that is not acceptable when it involves innocent children who need ACS to protect and not throw them to the wolves,” a Brooklyn investigator said.
Councilwoman Diana Ayala (D-Manhattan/Bronx) called the boy’s death “heartbreaking.”
“I will follow up to see what happened here,” she said.
Representatives for ACS said state law prohibits them from sharing case information or whether a family has been investigated.
— Additional reporting by Craig McCarthy
