A Louisiana woman has been taken into custody after her disabled 12-year-old son vanished and was later found dead from an alligator attack.
Louisiana woman charged in son’s death
Police identified the boy’s mother as 34-year-old Hilda Vasquez. She was arrested over the weekend and charged with negligent homicide and second-degree cruelty to a child in connection to the death of her son, Bryan Vasquez.
The case began on August 14 when Hilda reported her son missing, setting off an intensive search that drew local, state, and federal resources.
The search lasted nearly two weeks before ending in tragedy on August 26 when Bryan’s body was recovered from a lagoon near the family’s home.
Officials revealed the child sustained blunt force injuries from the reptile and ultimately drowned.
A volunteer from the United Cajun Navy, a group assisting with the search, located Bryan’s body with the help of a thermal drone.
The discovery came after two large alligators were spotted behaving abnormally.
Volunteer Jon Gusanders described the harrowing moment he realized what had happened.
“I’ve never seen anything like that,” Gusanders said. “And I hope to never see anything like that again.”
Gusanders explained he witnessed violent movement beneath the water, which led him to the boy’s body.
Two alligators, one about 11 feet long and another around 6 feet, were holding the remains underwater.
Using his drone, he distracted the predators while police moved in to retrieve the child.
“We did everything we could to protect his body, to protect his honor, while the NOPD got their boat out to successfully recover him,” Gusanders told reporters.
Authorities revealed that Bryan had run away from home before and that his death followed years of reported abuse and neglect at the hands of his mother.
Louisiana woman was previously arrested for abusing Bryan
New Orleans Police Chief Deputy Superintendent Hans Ganthier described the disturbing history at a press briefing.
“This has all been a pattern of behavior by the mother; this is not the first time that Bryan has been the victim of some sort of trauma and/or anything that we deem to be negligent,” Ganthier said.
“So this is all a pattern and this is all established in the warrant.”
Deputy Superintendent Nicholas Gernon added that investigators had uncovered repeated instances of mistreatment over the boy’s life.
“A pattern of both negligence and abuse over Bryan’s 12 years,” Gernon said, noting that officials believe the ongoing mistreatment caused “severe injury, undue pain, and suffering on his part.”
Authorities pointed to the earliest evidence of abuse when Bryan was only three months old.
At that time, he was rushed to a hospital after he began vomiting blood and had trouble breathing.
Doctors concluded he was the victim of abuse, suffering a fractured skull, a collapsed lung, bleeding in the eyes, broken ankles and legs, and a punctured lung.
“When he was 3 months old, she committed a skull fracture, broken legs, and a collapsed lung,” Gernon stated.
“At that point, he was removed from the home, and at some point subsequent to that, DCFS returned him back to the home.”
Records show that Hilda was charged in 2014 with cruelty to juveniles due to Bryan’s injuries.
She later pleaded guilty to a lesser charge of negligent treatment, received a five-year sentence, and was eventually placed on probation. Despite that history, she regained custody of Bryan.
While Hilda described her son as autistic and nonverbal, state child welfare officials in 2021 classified his condition as a “traumatic brain injury (non-accidental).”
Mother left disabled son home alone on day he vanished
On the night before Bryan disappeared, Hilda reportedly gave him a sleeping pill and later found him awake and wandering around the home around 3 a.m. while she cared for his younger sister.
She walked him back to his bedroom and returned to bed. The next morning, she said she left the house around 7 a.m. to take another child to school, leaving Bryan and his sister home alone.
By 10 a.m., her daughter told her Bryan was gone. A window in the bedroom had been left unsecured.
Authorities say Hilda admitted Bryan had previously attempted to run away twice before, once found by police and another time by a neighbor, though the second incident was never reported.
Investigators now believe her lack of supervision directly led to his death.
“As a result of Vasquez’s failure to protect and check on Bryan, he sustained serious bodily harm after he left the residence and entered the water,” police wrote in an affidavit.
After his body was recovered, investigators served the Louisiana woman with a search warrant and seized her phone.
Police Superintendent Anne Kirkpatrick spoke bluntly about the outcome.
“I think that the death of Bryan is a failure. I think it is,” Kirkpatrick said. “And as I said, we’re going to look at everything. I mean, everything.”
Vazquez appeared in court on Monday, and was seen crying as the judge listed out the negligent homicide charges against her, which were translated by an interpreter, as she does not speak English.
The judge ordered that she have no contact with any of her other three children, who she cannot be within 600 feet of once she is released from custody. The judge also ordered her to enroll in a domestic abuse course by December.
Into the same alligator pond would be a just sentence.