Surety bonds totaling $3 million have been set for a West Odessa couple accused of abusing and strangling the woman’s 8-year-old son to death.
Megan Lange, 29, and Rodolfo Reyes, 33, were arrested Monday on suspicion of capital murder of a child under 10 and injury to a child.
According to an Ector County Sheriff’s Office report, Lange called 911 from her home in the 2000 block of North Huntington Avenue on Nov. 5 to report her son, Arturo Francisco Coca, was unresponsive. Life saving measures taken by firefighters and Medical Center Hospital personnel were unsuccessful.
Lange told her Arturo had woken up after defecating and urinating on himself and after she cleaned him up, he stopped breathing, the report stated.
Ector County Sheriff Mike Griffis said Lange and Reyes, the boy’s stepfather, attributed the boy’s death to diabetes, but a forensic pathologist ruled the cause of Arturo’s death was “asphyxiation by manual strangulation with underlying causes of neglect.” He determined the boy was malnourished.
Griffis also told the Odessa American the 8-year-old boy weighed 35 pounds.
Although Arturo’s obituary said he was a third grader at Burnet Elementary, however, Ector County Independent School District Spokesman Mike Adkins said Tuesday the boy hasn’t attended an ECISD school since the 2020-2021 school year.
