A deranged Bronx dad, distraught over a breakup with his wife, drowned their 5-year-old son, poisoned their 6-year-old daughter and tried to take his own life today, police said.
Cops said Leonardo Espinal , 47, was staying at his stepmother’s house, where he was taking care of the children for the day.
Instead of bringing them home as planned, he told his estranged wife, Rosaura Abreu, he would keep them overnight, but contacted her an hour later to say he was going to kill himself.
Abreu rushed over at about 1:30 a.m., but when she arrived, Espinal had locked himself in the bathroom with the boy, whose sister was asleep on a couch.
A few minutes later, cops arrived, but they were too late. Espinal was full-clothed in a bathtub filled with water, with his lifeless, naked son beneath him.
Paramedics rushed the boy to St. Barnabus hospital, where he was pronounced dead on arrival.
But the drama wasn’t done yet. Espinal told cops he had swallowed some rat poison in a feeble bid to kill himself and that he had given some to the girl.
She survived.
Espinal, who was also hospitalized, was not charged today.
Neighbors and friends said Espinal moved out about a month ago. They described the children as happy and outgoing despite their parents’ marital troubles.
“They were nice kids,” said Dario Caba, the owner of La Estrella, a Bronx restaurant where Abreu works.
Caba said he visited Abreu and her daughter in the hospital.
”She looked confused. ” Caba said. “She told me that her husband had taken her son away. She was talking, but she wasn’t in the right state of mind. She wasn’t even crying. She was pale like she was in shock.”
Neighbor Tony Goff, 59, said he saw a paramedic sprinting out of the building with the boy in her arms.
“She had the body in her arms running to the truck giving him mouth to mouth,” Goff said. “Then I could see through the doors them giving him compressions. The kid was totally nude. I didn’t see any movement.”
“She told me in the morning ‘Leo killed my baby,’” said neighbor Francisco Medrano, 42. “I imagine that the only reason why he would do something like that is for revenge, because she must have left him.”
Additional reporting by Laurel Babcock and Leonard Greene