Priyanka Tiwari, Morrisville, North Carolina mother charged with starving 10 year old son to death. Boy’s body found months after dad filed domestic violence order of protection against mom and moved out.
A North Carolina mother has been accused of starving her 10 year old son to death, months after the boy’s father leaving the mother and moving out of the family’s Morrisville residence.
Priyanka Tiwari, 33, upon her arrest was charged with murder and negligent child abuse inflicting serious injury, WTVD reported.
Morrisville police were called to Tiwari’s home on Wednesday and found the child, who it had been determined had been dead for some time. The boy’s body was a in a state of decomposition, including bruising and rigor mortis, WRAL reported.
Dad files order of protection and moves out of home
Investigators said they found very little food in the home and said the child had lost a significant amount of weight in the past month.
A cause of death has not been released.
‘Without the autopsy, we don’t know how the child passed away,’ Morrisville Police Chief Pete Acosta said.
Family living in India had been repeatedly calling the home for several months to check on the boy, and that officers had been sent to the home eight times in 2023.
Officers were first called the home on March 16 and found Tiwari experiencing a mental health crisis. Two weeks later, Tiwari’s husband asked them to accompany him home to pick up his belongings.
‘He was leaving, leaving the home, and so we followed him over there,’ Acosta said according to WNCN. ‘He went and got several bags and left there was no issues.’
The chief also said the husband has a domestic violence protective order against Tiwari, although apparently the child was not included in that order.
‘We never saw him going to school,’
The Police Chief said nothing was reported to the Department of Social Services because no one saw anything of concern until they arrived at the house on Wednesday.
Neighbors described the area as a kid-friendly neighborhood where families are used to seeing each other, while conceding not much was known about the boy and his mother.
‘We never saw him going to school,’ one neighbor told WTVD.
‘It’s so sad for the kid to die when…their own parents are responsible for killing your kid, murdering your kid,’ another neighbor said. ‘So I’m definitely sad and shocked with that.’
Tiwari made her first court appearance on Friday and requested a public defender. She was ordered held without bond and is due in court again on January 11, WTVD reported.
Tiwari could face the death penalty or life without parole if convicted on the murder charge and up to 231 months on the child abuse charge.
No known motive for the egregious child abuse was necessarily known
