1-month-old NYC boy starves to death, cops launch homicide investigation: officials

A 1-month-old Staten Island boy starved to death over the summer – and the months-old case has been ruled a homicide, officials said this week. The infant – identified as Joseph Heben Jr., of Main Street near Craig Avenue in Tottenville – died from “complications of severe malnourishment,” the city Medical Examiner’s Office said Wednesday.NYPD cops responded to Staten Island University Hospital’s south campus around 7 a.m.July 20, where hospital staff informed them that the baby arrived unconscious and unresponsive, police said. He succumbed to his injuries at the hospital. Police have now launched a homicide investigation, though no arrests had been made by Wednesday, authorities said. It was also not immediately clear whether the child’s parents were being questioned. In a similar case last month, Harlem parents Laron Modlin, 25, and Nytavia Ragsdale, 26, were both arrested in the starving death of their 4-year-old son Jah’Meik Modlin, authorities said. Ragsdale pleaded not guilty to murder in the second degree at her Manhattan Supreme Court arraignment Wednesday....