Anthony Avalos's mother and her boyfriend sentenced to life in torture-murder case

Heather Maxine Barron and her boyfriend, Kareem Ernesto Leiva, were sentenced Tuesday to life in prison without parole for torturing and murdering Barron's 10-year-old son Anthony Avalos in 2018.

Barron, now 33, and Leiva, now 37, were found guilty on March 7 of one count each of torture and murder in a non-jury trial. 

Barron called 911 at about 12:15 p.m. on June 20, 2018, to report her son was unresponsive. Barron and Leiva told the Los Angeles County sheriff's deputies who arrived at their home in Lancaster that Avalos was injured as a result of an accidental fall. 

Avalos died in the hospital the next day. Investigators deemed the boy's death suspicious. They later determined that he had been tortured, abused and beaten over a period of several years. 

According to prosecutors, during the last five days of his life, Avalos was whipped with a belt and a looped cord, dropped on his head, and had hot sauce poured on his face and into his mouth.

Members of Avalos's family, including his father, filed a lawsuit against Los Angeles County alleging failure on the part of multiple social workers, who had previously visited the Lancaster home. The county settled with attorneys for the family for $32 million in May 2022.

From 2013 until Avalos's death in 2018, the L.A. County Department of Children and Family Services had received reports that Anthony and his six half-siblings were denied food and water, beaten, sexually abused, dangled upside-down from a staircase, forced to crouch for hours while holding heavy objects, locked in small spaces with no access to a bathroom, forced to fight each other, and forced to eat from the trash, according to the plaintiffs' court papers.