By TERRI VERMEULEN KEITH
LOS ANGELES Less than three years before his death in 2018, a 10-year-old boy told a school vice principal he had been abused by his mother, prompting a report to a child abuse hotline, the then-vice principal testified Wednesday in the murder trial of the boy’s mother and her boyfriend.
Gia Greaux, who was a vice principal at the time at Lincoln Elementary School in Lancaster, told Superior Court Judge Sam Ohta that she called the hotline on Sept. 18, 2015, after Anthony Avalos told her that he was being abused at home.
Her testimony came during the non-jury trial of the boy’s mother, Heather Maxine Barron, and her live-in boyfriend, Kareem Ernesto Leiva, who are charged with one count each of murder and torture involving Anthony’s June 2018 death, along with two counts of child abuse involving the boy’s half-siblings, identified in court only as “Destiny O.” and “Rafael O.”
The murder count includes the special circumstance allegation of murder involving the infliction of torture. Over the objection of Deputy District Attorney Jonathan Hatami, the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office dropped its bid for the death penalty against the two after the election of District Attorney George Gascón, who issued a directive that “a sentence of death is never an appropriate resolution in any case.”
Barron, 33, and Leiva, 37, now face a maximum of life in prison without the possibility of parole if they are convicted as charged.
In an audio-recorded call to the child abuse hotline, Greaux said Anthony told her that his mother had been hitting him and his half-siblings and locking them in their rooms for long hours, and that he had moved to his aunt’s house.
Greaux, now a principal in the Palmdale school district, testified that the boy reported being struck by his mother with a ping pong paddle.
She said the boy told her that his father was in Mexico and that his aunt and uncle were going to be his mom and dad…
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