D.S. Woodfill

12 News

Veronica Marie Diaz concedes that she and her boyfriend chose to pay for cigarettes, Netflix movies and a $340 monthly cable bill rather than feed her 9-month-old son for almost a month.

The 27-year-old Phoenix woman spoke to reporters on March 26, 2014, two days after police arrested her and her boyfriend, Ryan Adam Morris, 32, for starving the infant while continuing to feed four other children in their care.

Diaz offered a variety of explanations and excuses for her behavior — depression prevented her from walking a mile to buy infant formula, finances kept her from buying formula after Morris lost his job — but she blamed Morris for the decision to pay for entertainment and food for themselves.

"I tried harder than he did, but it just didn't seem like he wanted to help me find a way," she said.

Court records indicate that state Child Protective Services agents were in contact with Diaz and Morris and that the couple avoided a meeting with a CPS agent when they fled to California. But Diaz said the agency was concerned about another child in her care.

State officials created a new agency to replace CPS in 2014 after a review turned up thousands of cases that went uninvestigated. But a spokeswoman for the newly created agency refused to comment on the case involving Diaz because the hospitalized child's condition was not critical enough to warrant a response.

Diaz said in court documents that she fed her son only water and a little bit of cow's milk at night. Then, on March 21, the baby's health took a sudden turn for the worse. He turned pale and his eyes began twitching, Diaz said.

"It looked like it — like he was (dying)," she said.

Morris took the baby to Phoenix Baptist Hospital, police said. Diaz, who said she stayed at home with the other children, said doctors told them that the child's kidneys were failing. Medical staff at the hospital weighed the child and discovered he was only 7 pounds, which is less than half of the normal weight of a 9- month-old, according to a website for the national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Diaz said she regrets her actions. "I should have tried harder," she said. "I feel like I failed all of (those) kids."

Still, Diaz said she doesn't deserve jail time and instead needs to be treated in a hospital for her depression.The infant is under medical supervision at Phoenix Children's Hospital. His condition was not clear.

Diaz said child-welfare workers had started checking in with the family last year after the couple stopped taking her daughter, who suffers from a heart problem, to her cardiologist appointments.

She also skipped out of a scheduled appointment with state child-welfare workers late last year, according to court records.

Sgt. Steve Martos, a Phoenix Police Department spokesman, said the case is clear-cut child abuse "at minimum."

"If we give her the benefit of a doubt and argue that she did not have money, there's a variety of different places she can go to for assistance," he said.

Editor's note: This story originally was published on March 27, 2014. An earlier version of the story incorrectly identified Morris as the baby's father.