CORPUS CHRISTI (Kiii News) – 21 month old Texas Ruiz, named after his father's favorite football team, died January 1, 2011 from what was thought to be a seizure, but has now been ruled a homicide.
"It's an everyday reminder of what we lost, everyday reminder." Said Lisa Ruiz, Texas's step mother, as she shows us a collage of picture posted on the wall to remember Texas Ruiz.
Lisa Ruiz spoke on the behalf of her husband Raul Ruiz who is out of town working. She says they were both notified that on January 1, 2011, after police and paramedics arrived at the mother's Calallen home at the Country Estates Apartments where the baby boy was first reported to have suffered a seizure; the toddler was rushed to Driscoll Children's Hospital where he was pronounced dead.
Lisa Ruiz says, "when I first got on that phone and called my husband, cause he works out of town, to tell him how his son passed away, the first thing was, ‘you're lying, there's no way I can believe you that he died like that' I said ‘I'm sorry babe but I have it black and white'."
The autopsy report obtained by 3 News shows the cause of death is from multiple blunt force injuries to his head and stomach. The baby was also recovering from a fractured rib. The Medical Examiner is labeling the case as a homicide.
Lisa Ruiz says she and her husband tried to gain custody of Texas after learning that both the child's mother and her spouse had been investigated by Child Protective Services (CPS) months before the incident happened.
So far, no one has been arrested or named as a suspect by police. But the baby's step-father 22-year-old Juan Garza is at Nueces County Jail on a charge not related to this homicide; he was arrested on a charge of injury to a child.
