A New Orleans woman has been arrested after her 12-year-old son, who was autistic and non-verbal, was found dead in a lagoon and determined to have been killed in an alligator attack, police said.
The New Orleans Police Department arrested Hilda Vasquez on charges of second-degree cruelty to a juvenile and negligent homicide following the discovery of her son, Bryan Vasquez, on Aug. 26. Bryan had been reported missing on Aug. 14, and an investigation by the coroner concluded his cause of death was an alligator attack and drowning.
According to statements relayed by local media and the family, Hilda Vasquez said she was awakened about 3 a.m. on the morning Bryan went missing after he had difficulty sleeping. She brought him back to his sister’s room and gave him a melatonin sleep aid, she said. Vasquez said she later left the house at about 7 a.m. to take her younger son to school, leaving Bryan and an 11-year-old daughter at home. She said she did not check on Bryan before leaving because his bedroom door was closed and she believed he was still asleep.
Vasquez said she only discovered her son was missing after calling her daughter around 10 a.m. to run errands and being told Bryan was gone. She said she then checked the bedroom and found a window open; she told reporters the window had been left unlocked because Bryan “had never tried to leave that way before.” The family had moved recently and, according to Vasquez, had not yet set up alarms or other security measures at the new house.
Bryan had run away from home on two prior occasions in the weeks before his disappearance. Family accounts say the first instance, on Aug. 1, ended after a search and the police located him. On Aug. 4, neighbors reportedly found him and brought him home; that incident was not reported to authorities, the family said. At the family’s previous residence near a playground, neighbors were accustomed to returning the boy safely when he wandered off, the family said.
Relatives, friends and community volunteers mounted a large search after Bryan vanished, combing the streets of the Village de L'Est neighborhood in New Orleans East and searching daily from early morning until dusk. Volunteers used all-terrain vehicles and distributed missing-person flyers translated into English, Spanish and Vietnamese, according to local accounts. The family waited at a community search headquarters set up outside their home during the effort.
After Bryan was found almost two weeks later in a lagoon near the family’s home, the coroner concluded he had been killed in an alligator attack and had drowned. The New Orleans Police Department said it received records from the state Office of Children and Family Services indicating multiple reports had been filed against Hilda Vasquez for child physical abuse and lack of supervision between 2013 and 2025.
Vasquez told local media she believed Bryan had been feeling confined after the move and that he had been unable to return to school because a special-needs bus route he required had not been set up. "He just wants to run," she told nola.com.
Police did not immediately release further investigative details, and prosecutors have not publicly outlined the evidence supporting the criminal charges. The investigation remains ongoing as authorities continue to review the circumstances surrounding Bryan’s disappearance and death.