Boy, 8, Was Strangled, Autopsy Finds; Mother’s Boyfriend Held
An autopsy found that 8-year-old Carlos Alberto Pineda was strangled, the coroner’s office said Sunday.
The body of the boy, who had been missing for six days, was found Friday afternoon at an apartment construction site at Muirfield Road and Edgewood Place in Los Angeles.
His mother’s boyfriend, Manuel Morales, 25, worked at the location and lived nearby. He was arrested Wednesday on suspicion of child abduction after the boy vanished, police said.
Morales has denied having anything to do with the boy’s disappearance, telling officers that he was taken from him by robbers, police said.
The boy was last seen on July 7 when he left his mother’s house with Morales, ostensibly to borrow $1,500 for a trip she wanted to take back to her native El Salvador. Police said Morales and Adela Pineda had quarreled the day before about the trip, and Morales had threatened “to do something she would remember for the rest of her life,” if she left.
The next day, however, he relented, and left with the boy to borrow money for the trip, officers said.
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