Man charged with murder in toddler’s death
A battered 2-year-old boy is dead and his mother’s boyfriend has been charged in the slaying, according to a Las Vegas police report obtained Wednesday.
Diego Nochebuena, 28, was arrested Tuesday and charged with first-degree murder in the death of toddler Axel Caro.
According to the report, Nochebuena told police he was alone with the boy Friday evening at their apartment at 2020 N. Christy Lane, near Lake Mead and Nellis boulevards.
Shortly after he placed Axel in a bedroom, the child began convulsing and eventually stopped responding, Nochebuena told police.
The boy was transported to North Vista Hospital, where he was pronounced dead, the report said.
In separate interviews with detectives, Nochebuena and Axel’s mother, Luzbet Caro, said the boy was fine when Caro left for work Friday. The boy had bruised his head in a fall a week earlier but had been “alert and in good health” the night of his death, the report said.
Caro and Nochebuena told police the fall was the cause of Axel’s bruises, and neither knew of any other injury to the boy, the report said.
Autopsy X-ray results found both of Axel’s collarbones had been broken and he had several bruises, old and new, to his head, face and back. A brain hemorrhage was the cause of death, the report said.
Detectives asked Nochebuena on Tuesday to take a polygraph test. Before the test was administered, Nochebuena changed his story and said he had struck Axel “very hard in the top of the head” with his palm Friday because he was angry the child would not take his medicine and go to sleep.
Nochebuena also demonstrated to detectives how he shook the boy “vigorously” after he began convulsing, which police said may have been how Axel broke his collarbones.
Lt. Raymond Steiber, who heads the Las Vegas police abuse and neglect detail, said severe child abuse cases have increased in frequency this year.
“Some people try to blame the economy on that. That might be an aspect, but I can’t say for sure that it is,” he said. “There is not one reason. It’s all on a case-by-case basis.”
A common thread in all abuse cases, Steiber said, is how unnecessary it is for a child to die by the hand of a caregiver. “They’re all 100 percent preventable.”