Death of boy buried in Cleveland backyard ruled a homicide

CLEVELAND – An Ohio medical examiner has ruled the death of a 4-year-old boy whose remains were found in a trash bag in the backyard of a vacant Cleveland home a homicide by “unspecified means.”

No one has been arrested or charged in the death of Eliazar Ruiz, whose remains were found by a landscaper in September.

His mother, imprisoned on a parole violation for a drug conviction, helped identify the boy in January after seeing a sketch on television.

WOIO-TV reports the boy’s grandmother wasn’t allowed to file a missing persons report in June 2017 because she didn’t have custody. The grandmother, Dawn Battle, says she, along with Eliazar’s mother and father, thought he’d been taken out of state by his godmother, who’d been caring for the boy.