BLOOMINGTON, Ind. (AP) — An Indiana man accused of abusing his 12-year-old son and starving the child to death has pleaded guilty to murder.
Luis Eduardo Posso Jr., 35, entered the plea Wednesday under an agreement with prosecutors that calls for the dismissal of other charges, including neglect of a dependent resulting in death and battery resulting in injury to someone younger than 14.
Luis Posso (Monroe County Sheriff’s Office)
Posso, a transient man, carried the body of his son, Eduardo Posso, into the emergency room of a Bloomington hospital in May 2019. An autopsy showed the child had been beaten and starved and that he weighed only 50 pounds.
On Wednesday, a Monroe County judge dismissed a petition seeking life in prison without parole and scheduled Posso’s sentencing hearing for Aug. 18, The Herald-Times reported.
The maximum standard prison sentence for murder under state law is 65 years. That’s the sentence a judge imposed in July 2021 for the boy’s stepmother, 28-year-old Dayana Medina-Flores, when she pleaded guilty to murder in the boy’s death.
Court documents filed in the case said Posso and Medina-Flores agreed he should take Eduardo to the hospital when they noticed he was cold to the touch, unresponsive and didn’t appear to be breathing.
The Herald-Times has reported the boy died after being denied food over a period of time while restrained with cords and padlocked chains.
A probable cause affidavit said the child “was found to be severely emaciated by the hospital staff, and had multiple bruises, lacerations and ulcers all over his body in various stages of healing” and that was evidence he had been neglected, abused and starved.
Three other children in the family showed no signs of physical abuse or malnourishment.
A detective said Posso told him the boy had fallen and hit his head and wasn’t malnourished.
