Neighbors of the Bronx woman and special needs 10-year-old son whose bodies were discovered in their NYCHA apartment this week smelled a foul odor coming from the apartment for about a week — and feared the worst.
“The smell was in my window,” said Melissa Ortiz, whose windows face those of Sharlene Santiago’s apartment inside the Marble Hill Houses. “There were a lot of insects and flies in the kitchen, living room, and my room.
“I was telling my husband, ‘It smells like somebody’s dead!’” Ortiz, 56, said. “I was gonna call but my husband said, ‘No, don’t get it involved because you don’t know.’ But since last week we know the smell … was coming.”
Santiago, 39, was found dead inside her apartment around 11:30 p.m. Wednesday after cops received a 911 call about a foul odor coming from the apartment on Broadway near W. 228th St. Her son, Brian Santiago, who was handicapped and confined to a bed, was also found dead, cops said.
Anusha Bayya for New York Daily News
A Bronx woman and her 10-year-old son were found dead inside their NYCHA apartment. (Anusha Bayya for New York Daily News)
Cops believe Santiago had a medical episode and died first. With no one to care for him, Brian may have starved to death, sources said. An autopsy has been scheduled to determine how the two died.
The smell of decomposition was still palpable in the building hallway on Friday.
It was not immediately clear how long Santiago and her son were dead before their bodies were discovered, but neighbors suspected it had been at least a week.
Ortiz had seen Santiago and her son, who was in a wheelchair, waiting for a school bus one morning more than a week ago, she said.
“She took the little kid downstairs in the morning and from that day I didn’t see her again,” Ortiz recalled.
Santiago, neighbors said, mostly kept to herself and didn’t often talk to building tenants.
“They’re not open,” one neighbor, who only wished to be identified as David, said about Santiago and her son. “She’s not necessarily all friendly. You could tell she has problems. She wasn’t the most friendly person.”
Santiago often looked disheveled and dirty, neighbors said. But Brian, who couldn’t hear and didn’t speak, was always dressed in pants and a T-shirt.
“He was in a wheelchair and he was going from the wheelchair to the bed,” Ortiz said. “And [Santiago] had to do everything because he was in pampers and everything.
“It was only him and her,” Ortiz said.
Questions about Santiago’s fitness as a parent were raised when Brian was born in 2013, and a test revealed that the child had marijuana in his system at birth, according to law enforcement sources.
The city’s Administration for Children’s Services investigated five complaints of neglect about Santiago’s care in the next decade. The allegations included lack of supervision of her son and using drugs while caring for Brian. She was the focus of several “failure to thrive” complaints alleging the child was not developing adequately or gaining weight, the police source said.
The boy was removed from Santiago’s custody following the most recent complaint in May 2016 — for drug abuse and failure to thrive — though the city restored Santiago’s guardianship over her son at some later date, according to the law enforcement source.
There hasn’t been an ACS complaint against Santiago in eight years. The decision to have Brian returned to her mother was made by a Family Court Judge.
Santiago’s first recorded ACS case involved a 2011 complaint for inadequate guardianship and drug use concerning an unidentified daughter, who was not in her mother’s custody when police found the mom dead on Wednesday, the source said.
ACS did not return an email for comment.
