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Former EMT on trial for allegedly burning hands of 2 children

Michael Torres denied the allegations and suggested to the jury that it was his girlfriend who might have burned the children

By Randall Beach
New Haven Register

NEW HAVEN, Conn. — Michael Torres testified in his own defense Tuesday that he did not burn the hands of two children on a stove and that he helped get the most severely burned child to the hospital.

During closing arguments later Tuesday, Torres’ attorney, Wade Luckett, suggested to jurors that Torres’ girlfriend might have been the one who burned the kids.

But the state’s two prosecutors asserted in their closing arguments that Torres’ account defies common sense and that the three kids who testified he committed the crime would have no reason to make that up.

Jurors are scheduled to begin their deliberations Wednesday morning.

Torres, 31, who was living with the children and Natasha Figueroa in an apartment on Orchard Street at the time of the events in August 2015, faces multiple counts of risk of injury to a minor and unlawful restraint as well as first-degree assault and second-degree assault.

Figueroa, who entered into a plea deal with the state and testified against Torres last week, is awaiting sentencing on risk of injury counts.

The first witness Tuesday was Dr. Richard Garvey, a surgeon at the Burn Unit of Bridgeport Hospital who treated the severe burns of the 4-year-old child.

Garvey said she sustained fourth-degree and fifth-degree burns. He said her fingers were curled up, indicating the burns were deep, and her fingertips were blackened and badly damaged. Surgery was required to remove dead tissue. Skin grafting was done.

When asked by Assistant State’s Attorney Karen Roberg whether the wounds could have been self-inflicted, he said he has never seen it happen. He explained a person would quickly remove his or her hands from the flame because of the pain.

Following the surgery, Garvey said, the girl required extensive physical therapy.

After the state rested its case, Luckett called Torres to the witness stand. He was dressed in a black suit and keeps his hair in a ponytail.

Luckett immediately asked Torres whether he burned the two children. “No,” Torres said twice.

He said he was in the master bedroom the evening of Aug. 16, 2015, with the two infant-age children when “we heard (the 4-year-old) cry out. She ran into the bedroom, saying she got burned. She was crying.”

Torres said he asked her what had happened and she replied, “I burned it, I burned it. I burned it on the stove.”

He said when he looked at one of her hands, he saw only “a small burn along the pinky. It was just a normal little burn. I said, ‘Run it under cold water.’”

Torres said Figueroa then went out to a drugstore to buy some supplies to treat the burn. About five minutes later, he said, the girl called him into the bathroom.

“She was on her knees, hunched over the bathtub, with water running over,” he said.

When he asked to see the burn, she again showed him her hands. “They were extremely worse than what I’d thought.”

Torres said he called Figueroa and told her the girl needed to go to the hospital. But neither of them had a car, so after Figueroa returned home, he ran several blocks to his mother’s house to tell her what had happened and to come up with a plan to drive the girl to Yale New Haven Hospital’s Saint Raphael’s campus.

Torres acknowledged he didn’t call 911. When Luckett asked why not, Torres said it was because of something Figueroa said. He wasn’t allowed to reveal what this was because of the hearsay rule.

After his mother got a friend with a car to drive the other four kids to his mother’s house, the friend then drove Torres, Figueroa and the 4-year-old to the hospital. “I wrapped her hands in a towel.”

He said the girl was taken by ambulance to Bridgeport and he went back home with the four kids later that night. He said he didn’t notice any burns on the hands of the other girl, who was 8. He noted, “She was very quiet.”

“Do you think it was a mistake not to call 911?” Luckett asked.

“Yes,” Torres replied.

“Looking back on it, would you have done things differently?” Luckett continued.

“Yes,” Torres said again.

Under cross-examination by Senior Assistant State’s Attorney Maxine Wilensky, Torres said he became like a father to all five of the kids, although he was the biological father of just one of them. He said he loved them.

Wilensky asked Torres about his record as an EMT. He said his EMT license had expired in 2015.

Wilensky asked why, despite his medical training, he didn’t closely look at the girl’s hand when she told him she had burned it. Torres said he didn’t think it was serious at that point.

He acknowledged that nearly an hour elapsed between the time of the burning and the girl’s arrival at the hospital.

Wilensky asked Torres about a window in the apartment. It has played a part in the case because one of the girls told police Torres called them into the kitchen to punish them for looking out or opening the window.

Torres said he had fixed the window so it could not be lifted up very far. “It was a safety thing.”

He acknowledged under Wilensky’s questioning that he was angry at the kids for not cleaning the apartment and for opening the window.

During Wilensky’s closing argument, she cited the kids’ testimony that Torres allegedly did not burn the 8-year-old severely because “she was kicking and screaming and he was unable to hold onto her long enough to do damage.”

When Luckett summed up his case, he reminded the jury that Figueroa told police: “Let’s just say I did it and get this over.”

“You have somebody who said, ‘I did it’ and it’s not the guy sitting over there,” Luckett said, pointing at Torres.

Luckett said that at the time of the burning, Figueroa wanted to end her relationship with Torres and was “not taking her meds.”

Luckett suggested the girls “would cover for their mother” and throw Torres “under the bus.”

But Assistant State’s Attorney Karen Roberg asked in her closing: “Would a child throw anybody under a bus? Is that what children do?”

Roberg said Figueroa’s “Let’s just say I did it” remark hardly amounts to a confession.

Copyright 2017 New Haven Register

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