HOUSTON – A mom is charged with murder almost a year after her 10-year-old handicapped son was found stuffed in a cardboard box in the back of her husband's SUV.
Texas City Police arrested 42-year-old Tina Madrid from a home there early Wednesday morning. It was last April that Pasadena police knocked on the door of her home following up on a tip that her 10-year-old son, Jonathan Singer, might be in danger.
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Madrid told officers that her son was fine and that he was with his father in Houston. Hours later, police found Jonathan's body stuffed in a cardboard box in the back of his dad's SUV.
Initially, Jeffrey Singer told police that he had left his son, who was blind with cerebral palsy, in the bathtub alone while he went to the store. He said when he returned, he found the boy had drowned. Singer was arrested and charged with injury to a child. He bonded out of jail soon after.
In the days, weeks and months that followed, investigators continued to follow leads and look for answers.
At the end of March, a Harris County grand jury indicted both Madrid and Jeffrey Singer on charges of murder. Their indictments reveal the grand jury said both Madrid and Singer failed to provide their son with adequate nutrition. He weighed only 38 pounds at the time of his death. They said the pair were both responsible for leaving him in the bathtub then wrapping him in a plastic bag and failing to get him medical attention. It said both caused his death by a means "unknown to the grand jury."
The autopsy ruled singer's death a homicide, but the cause is still unknown. Prosecutors said Jonathan's body had already started decomposing when it was discovered in his dad's SUV and that it is difficult to determine the exact cause of death.
Madrid and Singer had two other children at the time of Jonathan's death. One of those kids is now 18-years-old and the other is 16-years-old and living with a relative. Singer and Madrid will stand trial in Harris County.