Month-old New York boy starves to death, police launch murder investigation

A month-old Staten Island boy starved to death over the summer — and the several-month-old case has been ruled a homicide, officials said this week.

The infant – identified as Joseph Heben Jr. of Main Street near Craig Avenue in Tottenville – died of “complications of severe malnutrition,” the city’s medical examiner’s office said Wednesday.

NYPD police officers responded to Staten Island University Hospital’s south campus around 7 a.m. July 20, where hospital staff told them the baby had arrived unconscious and unresponsive, police said.

He died from his injuries in the hospital.

Police have now launched a murder investigation, although there have been no arrests as of Wednesday, authorities said.

It was also not immediately clear whether the child’s parents were interviewed.

In a similar case last month, parents Laron Modlin, 25, and Nytavia Ragsdale, 26, of Harlem, were arrested in the starvation death of their 4-year-old son, Jah’Meik Modlin, authorities said.

Ragsdale pleaded not guilty to second-degree murder at her arraignment in Manhattan Supreme Court on Wednesday.