BEL AIR, Md. — It was just after 5:00 in the morning on Sunday when the 400 block of North Main Street in Bel Air became a crime scene.
“An off-duty Harford County Sheriff’s deputy was traveling through the area and he saw an adult female standing in the middle of the road,” said Bel Air Police Chief Charles Moore, “but she was holding a lifeless child that we determined to be her child.”
With very little to go on, investigators began trying to piece together what led up to the killing.
According to charging documents, police soon determined the mother, 37-year-old Gloria Elena Hughes had fled from her hometown of Morganton, North Carolina with her three-year-old son, Jason Garcia, due to a child custody battle, and the boy’s father had alerted police there that she may be headed to Maryland.
Late Saturday, a man reported spotting the two in a vehicle he left running on Gateway Drive in Bel Air, and later that night, she took Jason to the emergency room at Upper Chesapeake Medical Center after he ingested one of her suppositories.
About five hours later, surveillance cameras at Self Storage Plus capture images of Hughes struggling with her son, slamming his head against the ground and then grabbing his legs and body slamming him as well.
A horrific crime and the first murder case for Bel Air Police in almost a dozen year.
“We’re dealing with it,” said Moore, “I give kudos to all of our partners that were involved. We have the sheriff’s office that assisted us, Harford County Child Advocacy, EMS personnel down to our dispatchers, our patrol officers who provided CPR. We’re working with them afterwards to deal with the grief and the stress that they’re going through.”
The investigation remains active.
