Isle visit a bright spot in girl's life (Nixzmary Brown)

New York Daily News ^ | January 16, 2006 | LISA MUÑOZ

[beaversmom]

The happiest days in Nixzmary Brown's all-too-short life were spent in Puerto Rico, surrounded by sunshine, family and fun, her mother said yesterday.

"She was always playing with her little toys in the courtyard of my family's house there," Nixzaliz Santiago recalled during an interview at Rikers Island.

Nixzmary reveled in the island's sunshine and yearned to go back. Last week, Nixzmary's maternal grandmother, Maria Gonzalez, revealed her granddaughter had begged her to take her back to Aguadilla, Puerto Rico, after a Christmastime visit.

But Gonzalez, 53, said she couldn't afford to buy the extra plane ticket that may have saved Nixzmary's life - and couldn't get the necessary paperwork done.

In the Rikers interview, Santiago, 27, gave new details about her daughter's tragic, turbulent life.

She said she conceived Nixzmary with a boyfriend she dated for a few months while living in Connecticut.

When she told him about the pregnancy, she said he told her, "'Get an abortion. I'll give you the money.'"

She said she refused, saying, "I'm totally against abuse of children and abortion. I'd rather give birth to them than abort them."

He offered financial support, but she refused, saying she wanted nothing to do with him after he suggested an abortion.

After stints in Connecticut and Puerto Rico, Santiago decided to settle in New York so her kids could have "a better life."

Soon, she met Cesar Rodriguez - the man who would be charged with killing Nixzmary.

He was working as a security guard, and Santiago had just moved to Brooklyn.

Despite Nixzmary's tragic end, Santiago insisted she still loves her husband and her daughter, whose slaying led to manslaughter and other charges against the mother of six.

"Which do you feel more, though?" Rodriguez's sister Iris asked Santiago yesterday during the Rikers interview. "The love of a wife, towards him? Or the love of a mother, for her?"

"The love of a mother," Santiago replied.

[beaversmom]

Other related threads:

EVIL STEPDAD'S SADISTIC RAGE - 7 year old Nixzmary , Bound, beaten, starved, killed (TORTURED)
January 13, 2006
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1557676/posts

TWO MONSTERS (Nixzaliz Brown will try to use the bogus Hedda Nussbaum defense)
January 13, 2006
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1558834/posts?page=1

TRAGIC CHILD TOLD ME HER SAD SECRET: 'I WISH THEY WERE DEAD' (7 Year old Nixzmary Brown)
January 14,2006
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1557951/posts

HEADS MUST ROLL (killing of Nixzmary--fourth child to die in two months)
January 14, 2006
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1558043/posts

'I WAS AFRAID HE'D HIT ME,' SAYS MOM OF HORROR NIGHT 'MISCHIEVOUS' NIXZMARY DIED
January 16, 2006
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1558833/posts?page=9

[N. Beaujon]

This case has me so outraged. New York is such a disgusting pit of depravity. I think these social workers should be prosecuted. It is inexcusable, unconscionable that these children were not taken away. The abuse here was NO secret. I hope we can take this up as a cause but the solution is NOT giving these idiot social welfare workers more money. This is what they are calling for now! "Write your legislator for more money." Just what you want to do is reward criminal incompetence.