A 11-year-old Connecticut boy resuscitated his unconscious mother Sunday night after she was choked unconscious by a man who was already on probation for attacking her, the CT Post reports.
Bridgeport police responded to the home just before 8 p.m. after the boy called 911, telling a dispatcher he’d found 37-year-old Israel Vargas strangling his mother when he went downstairs to investigate noises he heard. His mother, the boy said, was crying that she couldn’t breathe.
When police arrived, they found the boy performing CPR on his mother while four younger children waited in the room. The mother regained consciousness while the boy was reviving her.
The mother told police that she remembered arguing with Vargas and losing consciousness.
Vargas fled the home before police arrived, but he was taken into custody nearby. He was charged with first-degree strangulation, third-degree assault, violating a protective order, reckless endangerment, and five counts of risk of injury to a child.
“This is an extremely serious case and the defendant has a history of this type of conduct,” senior Assistant State’s Attorney Tiffany Lockshier said Monday during Vargas’s video arraignment hearing. His attorney, public defender Ashley Miller, cited Vargas’s family ties and lifelong residency in Bridgeport in her argument for a low bail.
But Superior Court Judge Tracy Lee Dayton ordered him held in lieu of a $250,000 bond and continued the case to February 23.
“He has been in front of me several times recently,” Dayton said. “He was given a break as a result of the advocacy of his attorney, but I warned him what would happen if he came before me again.”
Court records show that Vargas was convicted on charges of third-degree assault, reckless endangerment, and unlawful restraint — against the same woman — last October and sentenced to three years probation. He got two more years probation just a month later when he was convicted of threatening her and violating the conditions of his release.
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