[FeeFee]

Starving girl brain-dead,
nab mom


By DEREK ROSE and MICHELE McPHEE
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITERS

A severely malnourished 3-year-old Brooklyn girl with "old lady eyes" and a fractured skull was declared brain-dead yesterday as cops arrested her mother and questioned the woman's boyfriend.
Little Edith Gonzalez weighed just 16 pounds — half the weight of a normal 3-year-old — when her mother brought her to Woodhull Hospital on Monday afternoon, telling doctors the girl suffered a seizure. Suspicious doctors called police.

Cops were shocked by the sight of the child, who "survived much more than she should've," said one horrified police official. "She had old lady eyes, haunted. The poor little thing was abused and malnourished."

Her mother, Patricia Aguirrez, 25, was charged with reckless endangerment. Aguirrez's 27-year-old boyfriend was taken in for questioning yesterday.

Doctors at Woodhull desperately tried to save Edith, later transporting her to NYU Medical Center, where she was on a respirator last night.

Aguirrez told detectives that her daughter suffered seizures, then changed her story, saying the little girl recently was smuggled into the country from her homeland of Ecuador in recent days and was abused there, sources said.

"She tried telling all these stories, and we don't believe any of them," the police official said. "This little girl was beaten and starved right here in Brooklyn. There are other injuries consistent with child abuse."

Some neighbors on the child's block in Bushwick said Aguirrez and her boyfriend punished Edith and her 5-year-old brother by withholding food. But they conceded that no one called authorities.

Neighbors described Aguirrez and her boyfriend as troublemakers who often had fierce arguments in their second-floor apartment on George St., near Wilson Ave.

They also "used to fight in thestreet. They used to fight in the car," said neighbor Evelyn Roman, 45. "As long as he didn't hit [Aguirrez], I didn't butt in."

Another neighbor, Maria Carmona, also 45, said Edith "looked like a scared little girl. You could see the unhappiness in her eyes."

The Administration for Children's Services had no record of the family, but removed Edith's brother from the home yesterday, said Kathleen Carlson, a spokeswoman for the agency.

"If I had known something was happening [to the child] I would have stepped in," Roman said. "We protect our kids here."