Authorities arrested a New Jersey couple after their 2-year-old daughter was airlifted to a hospital for brain bleeding, burns and bone fractures — injuries one doctor said came from abuse equivalent to “torture.”
Police on Friday detained Yolanda Torres, 33, and Jose Velez, 52, of Galloway, New Jersey, the Star-Ledger reports.
Authorities believe that Torres abused her daughter on July 10 and then failed to seek medical attention until the child began having seizures.
Later in the evening, the girl was flown to Cooper University Hospital in Camden with life-threatening injuries, according to police.
Torres claimed that her daughter’s injuries — a brain bleed, bone fractures and deep burns to a hand and foot — happened during multiple “accidents.”
But while in the couple’s custody, the girl had been losing weight and also had lost some of her hair, authorities say.
A doctor who examined the girl said that the “combined physical traumas and psychological traumas raise the girl’s diagnosis to ‘the level of torture,'” according to a press release from the Atlantic County Prosecutor’s Office.
Officials have removed the child from the couple’s custody since the incident, the newspaper reports.
Prosecutors have charged Torres with two counts of second-degree endangering the welfare of a child as well as second-degree aggravated assault. Velez has been charged with two counts of second-degree endangering the welfare of a child.
Police also discovered Xanax on Velez when he was arrested. He has subsequently been charged with possession and intent to distribute the medication, which treats anxiety disorders.
[Feature Photo: Atlantic County Prosecutor’s Office]