Grandmother pleads guilty to causing boy's fatal injuries
May 5—While a South Toledo grandmother initially told emergency workers her grandson had hurt himself imitating a superhero, the boy's injuries were much worse than he would have gotten jumping from a bed, prosecutors said after she pleaded guilty Tuesday to murder and child endangering.
Yisenya Flores, 47, of the 3500 block of Hilltop Boulevard, now faces life in prison following her plea in Lucas Common Pleas Court related to Anjuan Hare III's abusive death while under her care.
Judge Joe McNamara asked Flores why she was entering the guilty plea.
"I'm guilty," she responded.
Flores' sentencing was scheduled for May 21.
She had told a rescue crew the 5-year-old boy, for whom she had custody was trying to fly like Spider-Man and had been knocked unconscious after jumping from a bed's box spring on Sept. 19, 2019, Frank Spryszak, deputy chief of the Lucas County Prosecutor's Office's criminal division, told the court.
But the boy's injuries weren't consistent with tumbling from a bed, he said while summarizing the case after Flores' plea: they were equivalent to someone falling from the top of a building.
The boy later died at ProMedica Toledo Hospital from multiple blunt-force trauma injuries because of ongoing child abuse, the Lucas County Coroner's Office determined.
An autopsy revealed the boy had blunt-force trauma injuries on his body, prosecutors said, and his skin was covered in bruises, abrasions, and lacerations, while his face appeared to have chemical burns. Some of the boy's teeth were also broken and he suffered significant internal injuries, including brain bleeding and intestinal damage.
Flores later admitted to investigators she had struck the boy on Sept. 18, 2019 and he then became lethargic, semiresponsive, and unable to get up from the floor. She didn't call 911 until the next evening.
