Two convicted sex traffickers — who entombed a deceased infant in concrete and kept it for 11 months in the house with their children — were hit yesterday with manslaughter and child-endangerment charges.
Domingo Salazar and Norma Mendez, both illegal aliens, pleaded guilty in July to federal charges of smuggling women from Mexico and putting them on the street as prostitutes.
Salazar fathered the baby with a teenager he forced into prostitution, Assistant DA Jacqueline Kagan said in Brooklyn Supreme Court. The tot, Carlos Santillana, died of battered-child syndrome.
The pair allegedly put the body into a container and filled it with concrete. They kept the container in the house with their three young kids, Kagan said.
“They allowed them [the children] to live in the house with the decomposing body of their step-brother,” she said.
Mendez’s lawyer, Amanda Scioscia, said her client did not commit an “overt act” of violence — she only failed to get medical attention for the tot.
Additional reporting by
Mitchel Maddux