A Las Cruces mom is out of jail on bond after locking up a disabled child in her home in a wooden cage while she took her family to a school movie.
On Wed., Jan. 30, 2013 the Las Cruces Sun-News updated their earlier story about the child caged in the Zia Shadows mobile home community by revealing Cindy Patriarchias, 33, was no longer in police custody for the child abuse charges leveled against her.
Patriarchias was reported to be no longer in custody of any of the four children in her home at the time of the alleged child abuse of the 8-year-old child either.
In addition, it was revealed by her estranged husband that the only reason he knew to tell police to go to the home and search for the child was because he was in attendance at the school movie event that drew Patriarchias, her new boyfriend, and the other three family children who were still living with her after he left the home in late December.
Upon arriving at the school he inquired about the missing child, and another female child from the home told him the other girl had been left behind because she was "misbehaving" and that "mommy gave her some medicine to make her knock out," the Sun-News reported.
A Las Cruces Public School spokesperson said the Columbia Elementary School part-time lunch monitor and volunteer "has been terminated," and Bobby Tafoya of the Children, Youth and Families Department spokesman stated that the four children are now in state custody, as they were removed from the home after Cindy Patriarchias's arrest.
Patriarchias and her boyfriend, Edmond Gonzales, 37, were both taken into police custody earlier, when another Las Cruces Sun-News report revealed that police responded to the scene and found the child in the home in the box bed.
Gonzales is still in police custody, and he has admitted he knew that keeping the child locked in the bed was wrong.
The box was created for the child who sufferers from microephaly by the estranged husband of the suspect, who says the bed was never meant to be used for punishment purposes, and wasn't when he was present in the home. Instead, it was meant to help keep the child from wandering the home during the night, when she was prone to get into household chemicals and medicines.
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