Police arrested a 29-year-old Queens woman early this morning and charged her with killing her 2-year-old baby boy.
Afriyie Gaspard was charged with murder and manslaughter, after police say she strangled her son to death, reportedly because the child wouldn’t stop crying.
Police said they arrived at Gaspard’s Jewel Avenue apartment in Queens on Friday, at around 5 p.m., after they responded to a 911 call she made.
There they found the baby, Izayah Hall, 2, unconscious. They rushed him to New York Hospital in Queens, but he was pronounced dead.
The medical examiner declared the boy’s death a homicide on Saturday after doing an autopsy. The ME’s office found marks on the boy’s neck indicating he’d been strangled.
At first, Gaspard told the arriving police officers on Friday that she’d dozed off for a nap and they boy had been fine. But when she woke up to check on him, the baby boy was not breathing in his crib, according to the New York Post.
But later, on Monday, Gaspard reportedly confessed to the crime, according to the Daily News. She told the police she puts her hands on the boy after he would not stop crying. That was when she was arrested and charged with the heinous crime.
Five other children were in Gaspard’s apartment at the time the boy was discovered Friday, according to the Post. They were unharmed and placed in foster care.
This is not Gaspard’s first run-in with the police over her children. She was arrested in 2007 after her young daughter was found wandering alone near the public housing complex where she lives. She was charged with endangering the welfare of a child in that case.
