GUILTY CO - Danny Juarez Molina, 2, beaten to death with brass knuckles, 14 Jan 2015

Colorado Springs Police have arrested two people in connection to the death of a two year old boy.

Raul Alvarado, 20, faces a first degree murder charge. Mayra Juarez, 22, faces a charge of child abuse resulting in death.

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A Colorado Springs man armed with brass knuckles punched a toddler in the face and torso for disturbing him while he played a video game, prosecutors said in court Friday.

A judge ruled Friday that sufficient evidence was found to take Raul Alvarado, 20, to trial over charges that he killed his girlfriend's 2-year-old son, Luis Daniel "Danny" Juarez Molina, in January.

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A Colorado Springs man who admitted inflicting injuries that killed his girlfriend's toddler was sentenced Thursday to 40 years in prison.

Raul Alvarado Jr., 20, pleaded guilty in August to child abuse resulting in the Jan. 17, 2015 death of Luis Daniel "Danny" Juarez Molina. Prosecutors say he confessed to a fellow inmate at the El Paso County jail that he punched the boy with brass knuckles after the 2-year-old child interrupted a video game.

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A wrongful-death lawsuit remains pending against the city of Colorado Springs and Colorado Springs police Officer Justin Carricato. The boy's father, Luis Antonio Juarez Martinez, claims police ignored repeated pleas for help.

After the child's father was granted partial custody of Luis including weekends, he and his family began to notice new injuries each time they picked him up. But staff members at the Sand Creek police substation, where the supervised exchanges occurred, did little or nothing when he or his relatives showed them the boy's injuries, the lawsuit alleges.

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Two months shy of his third birthday, Luis Daniel Juarez Molina died covered in bruises, scratches and bite marks.

"He was the most marvelous thing, the most loved thing," his grandmother, Blanca Martinez, said Thursday through an interpreter in a 4th Judicial District courtroom. "He was given a death that not the worst criminal deserves."

Relatives seethed, wept and reminisced over treasured memories of the slain toddler they called Danny at a sentencing for his mother, Mayra Juarez-Martinez, who pleaded guilty in October to failing to intervene in abuse allegedly inflicted by her boyfriend, Raul Alvarado.

Prosecutors allege Juarez-Martinez participated in abuse - even biting him - but say that the blunt force trauma that killed the boy on Jan. 14, 2015 was caused by Alvarado on a day she was at work.

Juarez-Martinez, 22, was sentenced to three years in prison by District Judge Michael P. McHenry. She had faced up to six years under her agreement to plead guilty to child abuse causing serious bodily injury as the result of negligence.

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