NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) – Police have arrested a 31-year-old mother in the death of her 5-year-old son found dead in their Queens home more than a year ago. Phyllis Reinoso, 31, was arrested Thursday on multiple charges, including manslaughter and assault. Police said they found Michael Guzman, 5, unconscious inside the family’s Jamaica home in January 2017. He was taken to the hospital and pronounced dead. Months later, the medical examiner ruled it a homicide from “acute phenobarbital intoxication.” Authorities said the boy fatally overdosed. “This case appears to be a case where the child suffered from epilepsy, was legally prescribed medication, but then it morphed into a case where there was a neglect of care,” said NYPD Chief of Detectives Dermot Shea. At the time of Guzman’s death, sources told CBS2 the city’s Administration for Children’s Services had launched 13 separate investigations into the family’s home, where five other children also lived. Eight of the cases had been substantiated for further investigation, two involving Guzman. On Thursday, CBS2’s Andrea Grymes took questions to ACS Commissioner David Hansell , who was appointed to the job shortly after the boy’s death. “Apparently, ACS had visited this home 13 times. How could a little boy die like this?” she asked. “Well, you know, this was one of the several tragic fatalities that happened shortly before I came the commissioner and while the law doesn’t allow me to talk about the details of this or any of those cases, what I can say is as soon as I became commissioner, I realized that we had to do a top-to-bottom management review of our agency,” he replied. Hansell said the review led to several reforms , like adding hundreds more child protective specialists and flagging potential high-risk cases of abuse for more ACS scrutiny. Reinoso is being held on $1 million bail. Police said she had been living on Staten Island but fled out of state. “About two weeks ago, we located her, apprehended her in Alabama. And she’s back in New York City as (of) yesterday to face charges for manslaughter,” said Shea.
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Queens Mother Charged In 5-Year-Old Son’s Fatal Overdose
