Mom of teen who died at Safety Harbor migrant shelter waits for answers

Written on 06/16/2023
Juan Carlos Chavez, Tampa Bay Times


In a small, humble home in the heart of Olanchito, in the Honduran mountains, Norma Espinoza carries the pain that refuses to be forgotten.

Every morning, she studies the photo of her son, Ángel. She prays, kisses the image, and says out loud things that her son would love to hear.

“If my son had stayed with us, I might still see him running around here,” Espinoza, 33, said during a recent phone interview with the Tampa Bay Times. “But he was a boy with many dreams. He wanted to fly high.”

Ángel Maradiaga Espinoza, 17, died May 10 at a shelter for immigrant children in Safety Harbor after having what Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri suspects was an epileptic seizure in his sleep. The autopsy is still not completed, according to District Six Medical Examiner’s Office records custodian Bianca Dempsey.

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