NEW YORK._ “He killed” was the support of the boy of Dominican origin, Ethan Rosa, an eyewitness of the murder by strangulation of his mother, Wanda Rosa, killed by his father, Emilio de la Rosa, who is tried for the homicide in the Court Upper Salem in Massachusetts.
The boy who was four years old when de la Rosa suffocated his mother to death on September 12, 2016, in the apartment they shared in the suburb of Methuen, surely he saw his father push Wanda, who was sleeping with the minor, downstairs, he grabbed her and strangled her.
The boy repeatedly asked him not to kill her.
“Dad, no. Dad, no. Please, dad, no!” The boy yelled at the father, heard by several neighbors who testified Thursday at the trial.
After strangling the woman, de la Rosa took the couple’s son to his grandparents’ house and fled to California, where he was hiding, working under an assumed name and living in the state’s suburb of Paterson.
He was captured there by federal marshals from the US Marshalls and the Massachusetts State Police Fugitive Unit and extradited to Methuen, where he faces a trial that began Tuesday and was adjourned Wednesday to resume Monday of the following week.
The boy is the star witness for prosecutors, a key testimony so that together with the evidence, de la Rosa can be sentenced to life in prison for first-degree murder.
Before questions from the assistant prosecutor Kate MacDougall, the minor also revealed that before strangling her mother, her father demanded that he hand over her credit card, to which the woman refused.
The minor added that his father reacted violently by attacking his mother, who had denounced him on numerous occasions for domestic violence and recurrent abuse, information confirmed by the Methuen police and the Public Ministry.
“He was trying to get it off his back,” said the now 11-year-old boy in fifth grade at a Lawrence elementary school.
He claimed that his father took him out of the building after killing his mother.
In addition to first-degree murder, de la Rosa is accused of violating the victim’s restraining order against him.
The trial presided over by Judge Salim Tabit, began Thursday after jury selection lasted several days.
If de la Rosa, who has three attorneys on the defense bar, is found guilty, he will be sentenced to life without parole.
In opening arguments, prosecutor MacDougall said it was Rosa’s relatives who asked Methuen police to search the crime scene apartment for a wellness check that morning.
Relatives and neighbors described the couple’s relationship as tumultuous and highly toxic.
Rosa was found strangled on the floor of her apartment, with a duvet (bed cover) over her body.
The accused, obsessed with the woman, has a tattoo on his right arm with the name “Wanda” and another with a Christian cross on his back.
MacDougall said Rosa was a mother, sister, daughter, and friend, and while she was taking care of her son, she had been training for a new job.
After killing Rosa and leaving the boy with relatives that morning, the prosecutor said that de la Rosa fled to New York, Miami, San Diego, and Los Angeles, where she eventually found work installing hardwood floors.
When he was captured nearly a year later, he admitted that he killed Wanda by strangling her in front of her young son, prosecutors added.
“He will tell you what he saw,” his deputy said in his opening statement.
Defense attorney Aviva Jeruchim described the couple’s relationship as toxic.
“They should never have been together,” Jeruchim said in her opening statement on Thursday morning.
She said that before the attack, de la Rosa saw a letter from Rosa that another inmate showed him in which she allegedly said that she did not know the child’s father.
According to the prosecutor, the defendant prosecuted the letter as the latest act of betrayal by his ex-wife.
The defense attorney admitted that de la Rosa put his hands around the victim’s throat and strangled her, but he did it on the spur of the moment and not because of anything he planned.
Two hours after strangling Wanda, de la Rosa took the boy to a relative’s house to disappear.
His lawyer alleges that the defendant was found in California, but he had no plan to hide.
“This is a tragic, tragic event,” said the lawyer.
She anticipated asking the jury to convict de la Rosa, not for first-degree murder but for the lesser charge of manslaughter.
“It was a moment in which he felt completely betrayed,” added the defender.
