A Washington, D.C., man convicted of child abuse and murder in the 2023 death of his girlfriend’s 16-month-old son in Silver Spring was sentenced to life plus 60 years in prison Friday afternoon in Montgomery County Circuit Court in Rockville.
Marlon Adilson Melendez, 30, was convicted by a Circuit Court jury in February of first-degree child abuse resulting in death, first- and second-degree child abuse, and second-degree murder in the March 2023 death of the toddler, according to the Montgomery County State’s Attorney’s Office. The boy was not related to him. (Bethesda Today is not naming the mother or the boy to protect the juvenile’s identity.)
During Friday’s hearing, Circuit Court Judge Jill Cummins ordered Melendez to serve the maximum sentence for each of the charges on which he was convicted.
Cummins addressed Melendez and the court, saying she recognized there was nothing she could do to provide the child with justice, but she saw no reason for Melendez to receive anything lower than the maximum sentence for his crimes.
After the sentencing, Melendez’s attorneys led by Bryan Shefferman declined to comment to Bethesda Today.
After Melendez was convicted in February, State’s Attorney John McCarthy extended his office’s “deepest condolences” to the victim’s family. “This is an outrageously sad case involving the loss of a one-year-old baby,” he said in a statement. “We are thankful to Montgomery County Police for their thorough investigation and to our prosecution team for their pursuit of justice on behalf of this innocent child.”
The investigation
In May 2023, Melendez was arrested by county police on charges of child abuse and murder related to the toddler’s death, according to Montgomery County police. Prior to his arrest, police were investigating the boy’s death and found Melendez had been abusing the toddler.
According to charging documents, police and Montgomery County Fire and Rescue Service (MCFRS) crews responded at 4 a.m. March 11, 2023, to the apartment of Melendez’s girlfriend at 7927 Chicago Ave. for the report of a pediatric emergency. Responding officers and paramedics found the toddler unresponsive in the apartment. The boy was transported to Holy Cross Hospital in Silver Spring.
Despite receiving life-saving treatment, the toddler was pronounced dead at the hospital about an hour later, charging documents said. An autopsy later determined the death was a homicide caused by blunt force injuries.
A police investigation revealed that Melendez regularly stayed at his girlfriend’s apartment, and he was present in the days leading to the boy’s death, according to charging documents. Melendez’s girlfriend told investigators that on the morning of March 10, 2023, her son began vomiting and would not eat. Throughout that day, the toddler continued to vomit despite receiving “appropriate” nausea medication from his mother, according to charging documents.
That night, the mother put her son to sleep on a mattress on the floor next to the living room couch where she slept, according to charging documents. Melendez slept in a separate bedroom. Shortly after falling asleep, the boy’s mother noticed the child was “restless” and placed him on the couch so she could sleep next to him.
Around 3:50 a.m., the mother “noticed [her son] was not snoring, his arms were stiff, and his eyes were half open,” charging documents said. When she notified Melendez, he called 911 and the mother rode in an ambulance with her son to the hospital.
At Holy Cross Hospital, a forensic investigator from the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner in Baltimore examined the boy’s body, charging documents said. The examination “revealed bruises and scratches about his body on his abdomen, head and arms.”
An autopsy revealed other injuries “consistent with child abuse,” including a broken right femur with severe dislocation and multiple broken ribs in various stages of healing, according to charging documents. In addition, the autopsy report noted the victim had a brain bleed and a “perforation in the small intestine that led to fluid leakage into the abdomen” that had become infected.
The infection from the perforated small intestine is what most directly contributed to the boy’s death, charging documents stated. Pathologists who conducted the autopsy “concluded that the perforation could have only resulted from blunt force trauma and that it occurred within 24 hours” of his death.
During their investigation, detectives obtained search warrants for cellphones belonging to Melendez and his girlfriend. Text records from the mother’s phone show evidence of “both physical and emotional abuse,” charging documents state.
Data extracted from Melendez’s phone revealed he searched the internet for “internal bruising” and other searches related to autopsy findings. The cell phone data also shows he deleted his browser search history just hours after the child died and while police officers were still in the apartment—and then again in the early hours of March 29 before he met with police at the 3rd District Station in Silver Spring for an interview.
The investigation also uncovered video evidence of an incident of alleged abuse committed by Melendez at a nearby restaurant two days before the child’s death, according to the charging documents.
Security footage retrieved from Salvadoran eatery Pupuseria Doña Azucena in downtown Silver Spring shows Melendez, his girlfriend and her son dining together around 7 p.m. on March 9. At one point when the boy’s mother had briefly left the table, the footage allegedly shows Melendez smearing juice from a wedge of lemon onto his index finger and rubbing it in the child’s eye, then squeezing the lemon in the child’s face, charging documents state. The child “was clearly distraught by this,” detectives wrote.
When the mother left the table a second time, police allege the footage depicts Melendez grabbing and pulling the child’s hair and using his thumb to “repeatedly scratch and dig into” the child’s temple. The child “appears to cry and be in distress” every time Melendez touches him, according to police records, which add that “the hair-pulling is particularly noteworthy, as [the mother] had noted [the child] was losing hair.”
An arrest warrant was issued for Melendez on May 19, 2023, and he was arrested by the U.S. Marshals Capital Area Regional Task Force in Hyattsville three days later, according to a press release.
Bethesda Today reporter Elia Griffin contributed to this report
