A YOUNG, WEEPING mother knelt beside the casket carrying the body of her 3-month-old son on Thursday.
Dressed in black and holding a white carnation, the 18-year-old woman kissed the coffin — no bigger than a shoe box — just before the boy was laid to rest at the Cemetery of the Holy Rood in Westbury, L.I.
It was the teen’s first reunion with the child since he was killed more than two years ago by a Brooklyn couple who smuggled the mother in from Mexico and forced her to work as a prostitute.
“She finally has some closure,” said Tim Jaccard, whose organization — the AMT Children of Hope Foundation — helped provide the funeral services.
“This was a loving mother who cared for her baby.”
The teen’s infant, Carlos, was found entombed in slab of concrete inside a Sunset Park apartment when investigators busted a sex trafficking ring on Nov. 25, 2009.
Domingo Salazar, 35, and his wife, Norma Mendez, 34, had beaten little Carlos so badly that he fell limp in his mother’s arms in January 2009, court papers show.
Salazar, who fathered the baby, and Mendez then forced the teen mother — whose name is being withheld by the Daily News — to put her child in a plastic container and fill it with concrete, the papers show.
For 11 months, the mother had to sleep near her son’s remains in the living room of the 40th St. apartment.
The heartless couple, who are now serving sentences for sex trafficking, were convicted of manslaughter this month for the death of the infant. An autopsy showed he died of battered-child syndrome.
Santos was sentenced to four to 12 years behind bars. Mendez will likely get the same prison time at her sentencing next week. They will be deported after their time is served, authorities said.
Jaccard has buried 94 murdered or abandoned babies since 1998 on a plot of land in the cemetery dubbed The Island of Hope. He began working with prosecutors as soon as he heard of little Carlos’ death.
I cry every time,” said Jaccard, 63, a retired medic with the Nassau County Police Department. “But this one was different. To have a child ripped from her arms and murdered . . . you just can’t fathom that. It’s just evil.”
he young mother wanted the opportunity to bury her child properly, but she couldn’t afford it, Jaccard said. She patiently waited for the convictions of her son’s killers, when the child’s remains were released from a city morgue that had stored them for more than two years.
Jaccard said he just wished he could’ve helped before the poor infant died.
His organization has helped save 2,855 newborns across the country this year — 13 in New York.
He initiated safe haven laws across the country that usually allow mothers to drop off newborns with no questions asked at firehouses, hospitals or police precinct stationhouses.
His group also has a 24-hour hotline available for at-risk mothers to call so they can give birth anonymously and hand the newborn over to child protective services.
For baby Carlos’ mother, Jaccard expects to find her a job once she gets a green card and offer her a new beginning.
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Originally Posted by mommacrazy30
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