CLEVELAND — A husband and wife are being held without bond after making their first court appearance Thursday in the murder of 4-year-old Eliazar Ruiz, which dates back to September 2017.
31-year-old Joanne Vega and 36-year-old Romaine Tolbert both pleaded not guilty to the following charges:
- Murder
- Permitting child abuse
- Felonious assault
- Endangering children
- Involuntary manslaughter
- Offenses against human corpse
- Tampering with evidence
- Kidnapping
Both are due back in court for a pretrial hearing on Thursday, April 18 at 9 a.m.
The child's body was found buried on Longmead Ave. after a contractor clearing out brush found a skeleton in a plastic bag beside a garage. The boy was subsequently identified as Eliazar four months later by his mother.
Ashley Makuhan had been preparing to serve an 18-month prison sentence for drug charges when she left her son Eliazar in the care of his godmother, Vega, in March of 2017. She told WKYC she hadn't had contact with Vega since before she was sentenced.
"I trusted her," Makuhan told Andrew Horansky while she was incarcerated. "She’s always been a good mother, I would’ve never picked her for my son if I would’ve ever thought that something like this would happen."