Mother allegedly stabbed 11-year-old son to death during Disneyland vacation

SANTA ANA, Calif. (TCN) — A 48-year-old mother has been arrested for allegedly killing her 11-year-old son during a custody visit.

According to the Santa Ana Police Department, on the morning of March 19, dispatch received a call from Saritha Ramaraju, who said she had “stabbed and killed her son in a room at the La Quinta Inn & Suites.” She also told officials that she had “ingested an unknown substance.”

Officers responded to the scene and took Ramaraju into custody, and she was transported to a hospital for evaluation. Police found the woman’s 11-year-old son in a hotel room with stab wounds, and fire personnel pronounced him deceased.

The Orange County District Attorney’s Office said Ramaraju moved out of state after divorcing the victim’s father in 2018. At the time of his death, the boy was with his mother for a custody visit. Ramaraju had reportedly purchased three-day passes to Disneyland.

The victim was scheduled to return to his father on March 19, but Ramaraju allegedly killed her son that day and ingested pills to try to take her own life. Investigators suspect the 11-year-old boy had been dead for several hours before Ramaraju called 911. Police recovered a large kitchen knife nearby that had been purchased the previous day.

Ramaraju was discharged from the hospital on March 20 and booked into the Santa Ana Jail. The district attorney’s office announced March 21 that they charged Ramaraju with one felony count of murder.

Orange County District Attorney Todd Spitzer said, “The life of a child should not hang in the balance between two parents whose anger for each other outweighs their love for their child.”

Spitzer continued, “Anger makes you forget who you love and what you are responsible for doing. The safest place for a child should be in their parents’ arms. Instead of wrapping her arms around their son in love, she slit his throat and, in the cruelest twist of fate, removed him from the very world she brought him into.”

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