Valerie Owusu and Emmanuel Addae (Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office)
A 28-year-old mother from New York and her boyfriend, also 28, are facing decades behind bars after being convicted of killing the woman’s 5-year-old son, brutally beating the child with several different weapons and then leaving him to suffer for days without medical help before he eventually died.
A jury in Suffolk County on Friday found Valerie Owusu and Emmanuel Addae guilty on one count each of second-degree murder in the 2021 slaying of young King Owusu, authorities announced. The verdict came back after a two-and-a-half-week-long trial before Supreme Court Justice Steven A. Pilewski.
“This little boy was beaten and suffered for days at the hands of these defendants, one of whom was his own mother, until he unfortunately succumbed to his severe and extensive injuries,” Suffolk County District Attorney Raymond A. Tierney said in a statement, adding that Owusu and Addae “have been held accountable for this horrific crime.”
According to a news release from the DA’s office, Owusu and Addae used “at least four different instruments” to “brutally beat” King inside of their apartment in Lefrak City, Queens, over three days from March 30 to April 1.
Prosecutors said the evidence established that after the vicious attack on the defenseless boy, the couple watched for several days as King’s physical condition continued to get worse until he finally lost consciousness.
But even then, Owusu and Addae refused to seek medical attention for the boy. Instead, they chose to bring him to the home Addae’s parents who lived in an apartment in Long Island, New York.
“On April 1, 2021, Owusu and Addae brought King to a family member’s home in Brentwood and left him there to die,” prosecutors said in the release. “The Suffolk County Police Department was called after the family member returned home the same day and discovered that the boy was deceased. The child was taken to Southside Hospital, where he was pronounced dead.”
After leaving the child at the parents’ home, Owusu and Addae drove back to Queens and took the daughter they shared to the mall to go shopping, according to a report from Newsday. A search of their home reportedly turned up a belt and several broken sticks that had been used in the heinous attack.
The medical examiner who conducted the autopsy on King testified during the trial that the boy “was beaten from head to toe and that his injuries, which were too numerous to count, caused his death.”
The two are scheduled to appear in court again for their sentencing hearing on May 1. They are facing up to 25 years to life in a state detention facility.
