The malnourished body of a six-year-old boy from Arizona has been found by police. The boy’s parents, Elizabeth Archibeque, 26, and Anthony Martinez, 23, and the boy’s grandmother, 50-year-old Ann Martinez, locked the little boy in a cupboard for an entire month because he had stolen some food. The cruel punishment slowly killed the child by starvation until the police came across his skeletal remains, weighing just eighteen pounds by the time he was found.
The family of the boy is from Flagstaff, Arizona, and all three – the parents and grandmother – have been charged with first-degree murder, kidnapping, and child abuse. The family members have shown little remorse about the death of the six-year-old boy and have pleaded not guilty to the horrendous charges levied against them.
Last week, the autopsy report came back from the proper authorities. The result? The boy, little Deshaun Martinez, died from starvation – and the manner of his death was listed as homicide. But anyone with the details of the case would have been able to guess that the little boy locked in the cupboard would die of starvation if stuck in there for a month.
Although starvation was listed as the official cause of the boy’s death, the other facts of the case are truly horrendous. The boy had the same weight as a baby despite being six-years-old. And he looked “skeletal” which meant he had almost no body fat remaining on his body, and his hair had turned brittle.
Prosecutors are turning over the facts of the case and have until July to decide if they’re going to seek capital punishment in the case of this boy’s murder.
Deshaun was found by police on March 2, 2020, when they were called to the Flagstaff property because the boy was unresponsive. He was lying on the ground and looked to be in horrible condition. He was so skinny that he appeared to weigh as much as a one-year-old baby.
“The physical appearance of the six-year-old child did not compliment his age, appearing malnourished,” the police said in a statement.
Although medical professionals arrived on the scene, they could not bring the boy back from the dead. He had been starved to death and was pronounced dead at the scene of the crime.
At first, his parents claimed that Deshaun died from malnourishment due to a mysterious medical condition. They also claimed that he might have been eating diet or caffeine pills in a bid to keep his six-year-old frame trim. But when the cops didn’t buy their bull crap, they broke down and told the truth about how they locked Deshaun and his seven-year-old brother in a cupboard for sixteen hours each day and didn’t give them much food.
Every day, the boys were locked in the closet from 8 pm to 12 pm when they would be released an allowed to eat a bowl of oatmeal or gruel. Four hours later, they “indulged” in a cheese sandwich before getting locked away again.
Archibeque told the cops that Deshaun was “fed a lot” but did not gain weight. Fed what? That remains a mystery.