Michael Ramos arrested after allegedly abusing 2 children inside Bronx NYCHA apartment
NEW YORK -- People in a Bronx NYCHA building are demanding answers as to how two children could have been abused repeatedly by their caretaker without authorities knowing.
That caretaker has now been arrested and he's facing charges after the kids reported abuse.
We want to warn you -- the details are disturbing.
Police say they got a 911 call this week about some kind of dispute at an apartment in the Eastchester Gardens complex. NYPD sources say police showed up and found a gun on a table, along with two malnourished kids who officers then took to a local hospital.
A 14-year-old girl told police 34-year-old Michael Ramos held a gun to her head and her 13-year-old brother's head on more than one occasion in their NYCHA apartment.
According to court documents, that girl remembers Ramos saying, "Someone is going to die today. Do you want to die today?" The 14-year-old said Ramos then pistol-whipped her and her younger brother.
Police have now padlocked the apartment door so no one can get in after the girl told police they couldn't get out. She said they had "not been allowed to leave" since around January.
NYPD sources tell CBS2 Ramos became the caretaker of the kids after their adoptive mother died.
"I didn't even know they were still living here," said Juanita Jackson, who lives in the building.
Jackson said she was friends with that woman and hadn't seen the kids since she died.
"I know she loved them kids. She loved the kids very much. She loved them kids like they were her own. I feel like she's turning over in her grave at what has happened," she said.
During an interview at the hospital, the 14-year-old told police Ramos had punched them, "used a fork to jab" them more than once in the last month, and hit them "in the head and various parts of their body with a wooden bat, a metal bat, a black tension rod and an electrical cord."
Prosecutors say a doctor at Jacobi examined the kids and found cuts and injuries consistent with those claims.
"I wish I'd known that they were there. I would have called, but I don't understand social services, you know? How come nobody checked on them? The school, truant officers, I don't see how the ball was dropped like that," Jackson said.
We reached out to the city's Administration for Child Services to ask how this happened, and they said they can't comment on specific case information.
Ramos' charges include criminal possession of a weapon, unlawful imprisonment, assault and endangering the welfare of those children.