A Tennessee mother and her boyfriend have been arrested after her 2-year-old son died three days after he was allegedly thrown against a wall.
Deputies responded to a call on December 2 to a Baxter home and found the toddler, Ventura Mora-Francisco, unresponsive, WSMV reported. The boy was taken to a nearby hospital and then transported to Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt in Nashville for a major traumatic brain injury, which hospital staff said was inoperable and unsurvivable.
The boy died three days later.
In interviews with the child’s mother, Sara Mora, and her boyfriend, Ashton Cole Sensing, detectives learned that Sensing was babysitting the boy and three other children. Sensing initially told detectives the boy fell into a small air vent on the floor and then fell a second time while he was sleeping on the couch, but later he admitted being upset with the boy several times during day and eventually hurling him against a wall.
The day after the child died, Sensing went on the run, apparently aided by Mora. The Putnam County Sheriff’s Office obtained a warrant for his arrest on a charges of first degree murder, and aggravated child abuse on December 7, but he wasn’t found until a week later, when deputies took him into custody at a Dollar General Store.
The sheriff’s office announced it had arrested Mora on Friday after she admitted taking Sensing to an undisclosed location to hide him from police.
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[Featured image: Sara Mora and Ashton Cole Sensing/Putnam County Sheriff’s Office]
