Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

Parents of dead NLV baby tell police they were high on meth

Click to enlarge photo

Raul Ramos

Click to enlarge photo

Adriana Hernandez

The 3-month-old boy was in a filthy onesie when his dead body was found by a curious neighbor peering into a red duffel bag found in a North Las Vegas dumpster on Jan. 19.

Later confronted by authorities, the baby’s parents, Raul Ramos, 52, and Adriana Hernandez, 32, initially denied they had a baby, according to a North Las Vegas Police arrest report. They were arrested Friday on counts of child abuse or neglect and destroying or concealing evidence.

In conversations with police, they admitting to smoking methamphetamine in their small studio apartment, where the baby and their two toddlers also lived. The couple got into a physical altercation, which prompted the baby to begin crying, according to the report.

Hernandez told police he grabbed the infant from his baby seat and lay him on his stomach on a bed. The couple said the baby began to cough and then stopped crying.

They assumed he feel asleep, they told police. They didn’t realize he was dead until about 15 minutes later when Hernandez was returning from the store on cigarette run, police said.

Since they were high, Ramos said, they decided to dispose of the body without reporting it to the authorities, the report said. Hernandez told police she wanted to summon an ambulance, but that Ramos convinced her against it.

The man wrapped the boy in his blanket, put him in a duffel bag and put the bag under a stroller, police said. 

About 5 a.m. on Jan. 19, the woman pushed the cart about a quarter mile to a dumpster of an apartment complex from where they were evicted about a month earlier, located in the 2500 block of Carroll Street, near Las Vegas Boulevard North and Carey Avenue.

A neighbor throwing out garbage saw the duffel bag sitting atop the garbage and thought he could use it. He called police shortly before 9 a.m.

A former neighbor, who helped police identify the couple, said she worried the baby had frozen to death because she saw him out in the cold with little clothes about a week before his body was found, police said.

She assumed the family was homeless, but they were living at the nearby Casa Blanca Hotel, where a manager immediately told police the suspects didn’t properly care for their children.

The couple told detectives that food stamps given to them to feed their children were instead sold to buy drugs. They also panhandled, but that money also went for drugs, police said.

The baby didn’t have any signs of injuries and it wasn’t clear Monday if the Clark County Coroner’s Office had ruled on an official cause of death.