East Pittsburgh parents accused of abusing 2-year-old son headed to trial

EAST PITTSBURGH, Pa. — A judge Tuesday ordered an East Pittsburgh couple accused of abusing their 2-year-old son to stand trial.

“I love my kids. I’m innocent,” Enrique Soto, 25, told Channel 11 News as he went into his preliminary hearing Tuesday.

• RELATED: Mother accused of burning son, 2, with cigarettes while father watched

His children’s mother, Anna Russell, 19, cried as she went into the preliminary hearing.

The judge heard testimony and then ordered the parents to stand trial on numerous charges of assault and child endangerment that center on accusations that the pair repeatedly burned their 2-year-old son with a cigarette.%

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“He's not a monster. She's new to our family, and we love her. They are good people, good parents,” Soto’s mother, Norma Jo Lowery, said.

According to police paperwork, a grandmother brought the toddler to Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh last August. During the visit, a doctor found 15 wounds on the boy consistent with cigarette burns, saying “these burns were administered deliberately, in a chronological order, over a very short period of time in one sitting."

Months later in January, the boy’s 3-year-old sister reportedly said her mother burned her brother while her boyfriend laughed.

“A child at that age is very impressionable. It's only this past January that she finally supposedly uttered that mom was responsible for burning her brother. To me, that's suspicious,” Russell’s attorney, Veronica Brestensky, said.

Brestensky said the marks were more than likely bug bits or a rash.

Meanwhile, Soto’s family said he would never allow such torture.

“He's definitely not an angel, but he ain’t no devil either. And somebody that would do that would be a devil, and my son is not,” Lowery said.

Russell and Soto remain in the Allegheny County Jail to await trial, while their children stay in foster care.

Cox Media Group