MANHATTAN — The former student who fathered a child with his science teacher strangled her in part because she regularly took their son out for McDonald's, and then killed their son because he witnessed the murder, DNAinfo New York has learned.
Isaac Duran Infante, 23, told detectives that he was filled an “evil” rage when he drove last Thursday from his home in Pennsylvania to kill Felicia Barahona, who he had a relationship with starting when he was a 17-year-old student at DeWitt Clinton High School in 2011, sources said.
Infante told investigators he confronted Barahona inside her West 153rd Street apartment and, when she grabbed a knife and tried to stop him, he used an electric cord to strangle her, according to sources.
He said that when he realized their 4-year-old son, Miguel, had heard the commotion and come out of his room and witnessed his mother being strangled, he had no choice but to strangle the boy as well to eliminate the possibility that Miguel might identify him, sources said.
Their bodies were discovered on Monday after the superintendent was told about an odor coming from Barahona’s apartment.
Video cameras captured Infante entering the building Thursday night and leaving just after midnight.
When he was brought in for questioning on Tuesday he eventually confessed to the killings after initially denying it, saying he hadn't seen Barahona or Migel for weeks.
“He said he was unhappy with the way she was raising the boy, dressing him sometimes in girls clothing, and taking him out all the time for McDonald’s rather than cooking him hot meals at home,” a source said.
"He was also fed up paying child support and had a new girlfriend and wanted to move on,” the source added.
Infante was arraigned late Wednesday in Manhattan Criminal Court on first degree murder in Barahona’s murder and second degree murder for killing their son.
According to a 2012 report from the Special Commissioner of Investigation, their relationship began in 2011 at DeWitt Clinton when Barahona, an Afghanistan war veteran, befriended Infante on Facebook, and took him trick-or-treating on Halloween along with her daughter. They ate at McDonald’s, and visited the Disney store in Times Square during the outing.
The report says that Barahona waited until Infante turned 17, the legal age of consent in New York, before inviting him to her home on his birthday, where they had the first of what would be several sexual encounters. The teacher told the teenager not to worry about condoms and that she didn’t like using them, according to investigators.
When Barahona became pregnant, Duran accompanied her to a doctor's appointment, and he even moved in with her for a few weeks in January 2012 before the pair split up later that month, the report claimed.
Barahona admitted the relationship to city investigators, telling them she was in love with Infante and had planned to marry him, the report added. She was fired from her $73,000 teaching job in August 2012, a Department of Education spokesman said.
The couple split before Miguel's birth.
Building resident Nelson Jaque said he lived a floor below the woman and often saw her playing with her young son.
"I would see her often, being very protective and almost obsessed with the boy," Jaque said.
