JACKSON, Mississippi (AP) — A fugitive Mississippi couple who was charged in their daughter’s death, then went on the run for five years was arrested in Oregon, federal officials said Wednesday.
Janet and Ramon Barreto were arrested Tuesday in Portland, Oregon, U.S. Marshal Gale Manning told The Associated Press.
Local and federal authorities declined to discuss details but plan to hold a news conference Wednesday afternoon in Oxford, Mississippi, to discuss the arrest, Manning said.
The pair is being held in an Oregon jail, Union County Sheriff Jimmy Edwards told WTVA-TV (http://bit.ly/1kBAyOS).
The Barretos are charged with manslaughter in the 2008 death of their 2-year-old daughter. They are accused of leaving their severely injured daughter, whom they adopted, at a northern Mississippi hospital in May 2008 and telling the medical staff she had fallen from a shopping cart.
Ena Barreto was immediately transported to a children’s hospital in Memphis, Tennessee, where she later died.
They also are accused of abusing seven other children under age 5 that they adopted from Central American countries — one 3-year-old weighed only 20 pounds.
Authorities said the couple also was running a puppy mill, with hundreds of sick animals in feces-filled cages.
The Barretos were free on $450,000 bond when they disappeared in 2009. The U.S. Marshals Service said it tracked them to a town in Mexico where Ramon Barreto’s family lives but lost their trail. The pair was later seen in various locations in southern California, including a rental unit they left in June 2012 after their dog sales became a nuisance.
The couple was profiled on the TV show “America’s Most Wanted” and listed among the Marshals Service 15 top fugitives.
