Inset: Saritha Ramaraju (Santa Ana Police). Background: The La Quinta Inn & Suites in the 2700 block of Hotel Terrace in Santa Ana, Calif., where Saritha Ramaraju allegedly killed her son (KTTV/YouTube).
A mother in California is accused of taking her 11-year-old son on a trip to Disneyland during a custody visit, only to kill him days later by “slitting” his throat inside of the hotel they were staying at, 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 felony enhancement of personal use of a weapon, with cops saying 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 said. “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 may have been problems between the two that led 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,” the local DA said. “Anger makes you forget who you love and what you are responsible for doing.”
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Prosecutors and police say Ramaraju, a former Irvine resident, moved out of California in 2018 after divorcing her husband, so she was staying at the La Quinta Inn in 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 said in its Friday press release. “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, a large kitchen knife was found inside her room and it appeared the boy had been dead “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,” Santa Ana Police said in a statement. “Inside a nearby hotel room, officers found an unresponsive 11-year-old boy with apparent stab wounds. Orange County Fire Authority personnel arrived on scene and pronounced the child deceased.”
Ramaraju was arrested on suspicion of murder and hospitalized for the ingestion of an unknown substance, according to police. She was charged after her release from the hospital Thursday and arraigned in Orange County. Prosecutors say Ramaraju faces a maximum sentence of 26 years to life in prison, if convicted on all charges.
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