COLORADO SPRINGS — Hours before deputies found 2-year-old Carmelo Ortiz-Hall in a southern El Paso County field Saturday, his mother wrapped the diaper-clad toddler in her coat and a dress, buried him under 4 feet of tumbleweeds and left him to die, court documents say.
When he asked her to stay, “she told Carmelo she had to leave,” according to court documents.
Nyesha Hall-Gonzalez was arrested Saturday on suspicion of attempted first-degree murder and child abuse. In court Monday, she was advised of her possible charges. She is being held at the El Paso County jail in lieu of $50,000 bail.
The arrest affidavit depicts an unemotional woman who assumed she had killed her child hours before he was found healthy and unharmed.
According to the affidavit, Hall-Gonzalez was going through a divorce and had told a friend Friday night that she planned to kill herself and Carmelo because “no one would want him after she killed herself.”
She did not plan on killing her infant child who was with her husband Saturday.
Saturday morning, Hall-Gonzalez was spotted at about 7:45 a.m. by a Colorado State Patrol trooper who saw her holding a toddler near mile marker 119 on Interstate 25, just north of the Pueblo County line. Then at 10:15 a.m., deputies were told that there was a woman wearing a nightgown wandering in the area. Deputies arrived to find she had child items in her vehicle but no child.
When El Paso County sheriff’s deputies questioned Hall-Gonzalez about the whereabouts of her son, she said he was already dead.
“You must already know he is deceased because you have a cadaver dog,” she told deputies, referring to the police dog Axel, who was brought to the scene to find the boy.
At about 12:20 p.m., she admitted she had left Carmelo, wrapped in her coat, in bushes. When she noticed the time, she said he was “probably deceased by now,” according to court documents. The dog Axel and his handler, Deputy Mark Miller, found Carmelo at about 1 p.m. The toddler had minor scratches on his legs.
