A mother in California is accused of taking her 11-year-old son to Disneyland during a custody visit, only to kill him days later by “slitting” his throat inside the hotel where they were staying, police say.
“The safest place for a child should be in their parents’ arms,” said Orange County District Attorney Todd Spitzer in a press release and statement Friday, announcing the charges against Saritha Ramaraju, 48, who is facing a count of murder and a felony enhancement of personal use of a weapon.
Cops say she used a “large kitchen knife” to slaughter her son on Wednesday, March 19, at a La Quinta Inn & Suites in Santa Ana.
“Instead of wrapping her arms around their son in love, she slit his throat,” Spitzer told the audience. “And in the cruelest twist of fate, removed him from the very world she brought him into.”
According to prosecutors and Santa Ana Police, Ramaraju lives out of state and was in California for a three-day custody visit with her son. She and the boy’s father are divorced, and Spitzer hinted in his statement that there could have been issues between the two that contributed to the child’s death.
“The life of a child should not hang in the balance between two parents whose anger for each other outweighs their love for their child,” according to the local district attorney. “Anger makes you forget who you love and what you are responsible for doing.”
According to prosecutors and police, Ramaraju, a former Irvine resident, moved out of California in 2018 after divorcing her husband, so she was staying at the La Quinta Inn on the 2700 block of Hotel Terrace in Santa Ana for her custody visit.
“During the visit, she bought three-day passes to Disneyland for herself and her son,” the DA’s office stated in a press release on Friday. “On Wednesday … the day Ramaraju was scheduled to check out of the motel and return the boy to his father, Ramaraju called 911 at 9:12 a.m. to report that she had killed her 11-year-old son and had taken pills trying to kill herself.”
When cops arrived at the motel, they discovered a large kitchen knife inside her room, and it appeared that the boy had died “for several hours” before his mother notified police, according to the DA’s office. “Officers responded to the scene and detained (Ramaraju) in the hotel hallway,” the Santa Ana Police Department stated.
“Inside a nearby hotel room, officers discovered an unresponsive 11-year-old boy with apparent stab wounds. Orange County Fire Authority personnel arrived on the scene and declared the child dead.”
Ramaraju was arrested on suspicion of murder and hospitalized after consuming an unknown substance, according to police.
She was charged following her release from the hospital on Thursday and arraigned in Orange County. Prosecutors say Ramaraju faces a maximum sentence of 26 years to life in prison if found guilty of all charges.
