"Infant John" COTTO - 18 months - Albuquerque NM

An Albuquerque mother is locked up for suspected child abuse after a
jail worker notices something out of the ordinary; an 18-month-old child
with a handcuff tightly locked around his leg.
Monique Garcia Cotto says she left her son alone with a friend
and when she came home, she found him cuffed on both legs with a pillow
over his face, nearly suffocating.
Two days later, with one cuff still on his leg, she took the baby
to jail to visit his locked up dad. That's when a watchful guard took
action and Cotto was arrested.
MDC Corrections Officer Lieutenant Jason Ellis described Cotto as
“suspicious, and not like she cared at all," while in the jail’s
visiting room, meeting with her son's incarcerated father.
Jail staff called the police after they spotted a plastic
handcuff tightly locked around the boy's leg.
"He was crying a lot, he looked in pain," Ellis said. He says
rescue crews removed the cuff, which had been looked so tightly, that it
left purple impressions on the boy's leg.
Garcia Cotto told police the cuff wasn't the only injury the boy
had when she found him restrained and gasping for air at her home two
days earlier. The toddler also had a cut on his forehead and red marks
under his diaper. But Garcia Cotto never called police, saying she's,
quote, "not a police person."
"Any adult that is made aware of an incident where a child is
being abused, they must report it. They have an obligation by law to
report it to police," said APD's Nadine Hamby.
Cotto was arrested for child abuse back in February and had an
outstanding warrant when she was arrested again on Mother's Day.
Albuquerque police are still investigating if Garcia Cotto's
allegations are true, that her son was abused while in the care of a
friend. So far though, nobody else has been arrested.