ALBUQUERQUE — A drawing of a toddler whose body was found buried in the sand of a playground led to the arrest of a young mother on murder charges Thursday.
Albuquerque police said Tiffany Toribio, 23, confessed to suffocating her 3-year-old son, Tyruss “Ty” Toribio, as he slept on the climbing gym.
“For a mother to kill her own child is unfathomable. Most people can’t even imagine how you could even think about doing something like that,” said Cmdr. Michael Geier. “We’ll never really understand why that happened, but we now understand the dynamics of what led up to that.”
Toribio was homeless and sleeping in the park, having been kicked out of her mother’s home and a friend’s apartment in the days before her son’s death because she was ignoring the boy and withholding affection, investigators said.
“What makes this story especially sad was when asked the reason why she took Ty’s life, Tiffany said that she did not want him to grow up with no one caring about him the same way that she had grown up with no one caring about her,” said Police Chief Ray Schultz.
When no came forward to report a missing child, police came to suspect that whoever buried Ty was a parent or someone taking care of him.
The break in the case came just hours after police released a photograph-like picture of the boy. Family members and others called a tip line to say the picture of “Baby Angel” — as neighbors living near the park nicknamed him — looked like Ty.
The police chief said Toribio told detectives that she suffocated her son in Alvarado Park before dawn on May 13 by putting her hand over his mouth and nose. She said she had second thoughts and performed CPR on the boy, resuscitating him, but reconsidered and smothered him again. Investigators said she then buried him under the climbing gym’s hanging bridge, where the body was found two days later.
Schultz said Toribio attempted suicide in jail and was under close observation. Toribio had no criminal record or history of drug or alcohol abuse.
