A mother who died alongside her 10-year-old son inside their Bronx NYCHA apartment this week was a reformed stoner who kicked her drug habit to care for her disabled son, according to her cousin.
“She had a history of marijuana yes but she cleaned her life up to take care of Brian,” said Ashley, whose cousin, Sharlene Santiago, was found dead alongside her son Brian Santiago inside their apartment at the Marble Hill Houses.
“She was a good person and this is a huge tragedy for our family. Her daughter and our family are taking Sharlene and Brian’s loss very hard.”
Investigators believe that Sharlene Santiago died of a medical issue and that her son, who was confined to a bed and incapable of caring for himself, may have died from starvation, cops said.
Brian Santiago was diagnosed with cerebral palsy, according to Ashley.
cops discovered their bodies inside Santiago’s apartment on Broadway near W. 228th St. after neighbors reported a foul odor around 11:30 p.m. Wednesday, according to law enforcement.
Maritza Ortiz, whose windows face Santiago’s apartment, described the terrible odor that invaded her home.
“The smell was in my window,” said Ortiz. “There were a lot of flies in the kitchen, living room, and my room.
“I was telling my husband, ‘It smells like somebody’s dead!’” Ortiz, 56, said. “I was gonna call but my husband said, ‘No, don’t get involved because you don’t know.’ But since last week we know the smell … was coming.”
Anusha Bayya for New York Daily News
A Bronx woman and her 10-year-old son were found dead inside their NYCHA apartment. (Anusha Bayya for New York Daily News)
The smell of decomposition was still palpable in the building hallway on Friday.
It was not immediately clear how long Santiago and her son were dead before their bodies were discovered, but neighbors suspected it had been at least a week.
Ortiz had seen Santiago and her son, who was in a wheelchair, waiting for a school bus one morning more than a week ago, she said.
“She took the little kid downstairs in the morning and from that day I didn’t see her again,” Ortiz recalled.
Santiago, neighbors said, mostly kept to herself and didn’t often talk to building tenants.
“They’re not open,” one neighbor, who only wished to be identified as David, said about Santiago and her son. “She’s not necessarily all friendly. You could tell she has problems. She wasn’t the most friendly person.”
Santiago often looked disheveled and dirty, neighbors said. But Brian, who couldn’t hear and didn’t speak, was always dressed in pants and a T-shirt.
“He was in a wheelchair and he was going from the wheelchair to the bed,” Ortiz said. “And [Santiago] had to do everything because he was in pampers and everything.
“It was only him and her,” Ortiz said.
Questions about Santiago’s fitness as a parent were raised when Brian was born in 2013, and a test revealed that the child had marijuana in his system at birth, according to law enforcement sources.
The city’s Administration for Children’s Services investigated five complaints of neglect about Santiago’s care in the next decade. The allegations included lack of supervision of her son and using drugs while caring for Brian. She was the focus of several “failure to thrive” complaints alleging the child was not developing adequately or gaining weight, the police source said.
The boy was removed from Santiago’s custody following the most recent complaint in May 2016 — for drug abuse and failure to thrive — though the city restored Santiago’s guardianship over her son at some later date, according to the law enforcement source.
There hasn’t been an ACS complaint against Santiago in eight years. The decision to have Brian returned to her mother was made by a Family Court Judge.
Santiago’s first recorded ACS case involved a 2011 complaint for inadequate guardianship and drug use concerning an unidentified daughter, who was not in her mother’s custody when police found the mom dead on Wednesday, the source said.
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