By Rebecca Henely
A 21-year-old Jackson Heights man who deliberately burned his girlfriend’s 11-month-old daughter by placing her under a hot shower pleaded guilty to assault last week, the Queens district attorney’s office said. He is expected to be sentenced to 10 years in prison for his crime, which left the baby permanently scarred, the DA said.
Anthony Parra, who lives on 73rd Street near 31st Avenue, admitted in his guilty plea March 8 that he was baby-sitting his girlfriend’s infant daughter, Raylin Castillo, and Raylin’s 2-year-old sister Valerie in his apartment May 19, 2010, the DA said. The girls’ mother was at work at the time, the DA said.
At about 3 a.m., Raylin awoke screaming and crying, the DA said. Parra tried to feed her using a bottle, but Raylin refused to drink from it, the DA said. After this, Parra took her into the shower, leaving her beneath the water by herself as he turned up the temperature twice, the DA said. When he saw her skin getting red, Parra scrubbed her with a sponge so hard her skin began to peel off, the DA said. Then as Raylin was standing on her hands and knees in the shower, he poured even hotter water from a faucet into a pan, which he then dumped on her, the DA said. Afterward, Parra put cream and alcohol on Raylin’s burns and took her to New York Hospital Medical Center of Queens in Flushing, the DA said.
The NYPD was alerted to the assault at about 4:55 p.m. at the hospital, police said.
When Raylin was treated at the New York-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center in Manhattan, the staff found 30 percent of her body was covered with second-degree burns, the DA said. She was injured on her back, the front of her torso, her scalp, her forehead and her bilateral upper extremities — the area along her shoulders, the DA said. Raylin was in critical condition after the incident and the scars she sustained from the assault will be permanent, the DA said.
Queens Supreme Court Justice Richard Butcher, the judge to whom Parra pleaded guilty, is expected to sentence Parra to 10 years in prison, the DA said. His sentence date is April 4, the DA said.
Reach reporter Rebecca Henely by e-mail at rhenely@cnglocal.com or by phone at 718-260-4564.
