Former teacher, son fathered by student found dead in Manhattan apartment

HAMILTON HEIGHTS, Manhattan (WABC) -- Police are investigating a family tragedy in Manhattan, after a 32-year-old woman and her four-year-old son were found dead inside their home.

Outside the nondescript apartment set into a hill in Hamilton Heights, family members of the little boy's father came to see for themselves. A family with a sordid past is now wracked with tragedy.

Janiel Santana described a custody battle between his brother-in-law and Felicia Barahona over their now four-year-old son Miguel, conceived in a scandalous affair between Barahona, then a public school teacher in the Bronx, and her teenaged student, who became the father.

Santana is his brother-in-law, and he says he cancelled a scheduled visit with Miguel just this past weekend.

"The last thing that I know, he was coming this weekend, but he couldn't, he said, that he was coming next week, and she say that it was okay," Santana said.

However, by the morning, the overwhelming, sickening discovery - the building super spotted the garbage that Barahona had left sitting out since Friday, and noticed that something was wrong.

"The superintendent smell something no good in the apartment, and he call the police. When the cops coming, they opened the door, and they found her and the boy dead," said neighbor Segundo Duenas.

Sources say Barahona's body was in her living room, and had an electrical cord wrapped around her neck. Miguel was in the bathtub. The Medical Examiner carried him out in a bag under Christmas decorations in the lobby.

The baby's father is on his way to Hamilton Heights from Pennsylvania after hearing about the boy's death on the news.