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The mother of a 3-year-old boy stabbed in the torso last night has been arrested, while her toddler remains in critical condition.
The stabbing was reported last around 8:30 p.m. as a "rescue" at a home in Cudahy, a city in Southeast L.A. County, according to KTLA. The boy was rushed to the hospital last night.
The L.A. County Sheriff's Department arrested the boy's mother, Michelle Betancourt, 23, following questioning this morning. Investigators told the ABC 7 that the stabbing "didn't look like an accident."
Though Sheriff’s deputy Kelvin Moody told KTLA that it was not immediately clear if the toddler had been stabbed in the home, neighbor Cynthia Griego reported that her father heard screams and saw a woman outside holding the body of a boy.
Griego told KTLA, “He ran outside and he saw the lady holding the kid in her arm, and he had blood all over him — his chest, his neck. So my dad told me he was going to walk away because he thought that the little boy died, and then he said he heard him crying. So he ran up to the kid, grabbed him from the lady. He started putting pressure on his neck.”
It's not clear if the woman seen with boy was his mother.
There have been conflicting reports about the toddler's condition. Sheriff’s officials initially first told reporters that the child was near death, but then he was reported as dead this morning, a report that was confirmed by the L.A. county coroner's office. However, the sheriff's department currently lists the boy in critical condition.
