Tulare County man gets life for torturing and killing toddler son
A 23-month-old found shattered in a Visalia motel room led to a life term for his father, who pleaded guilty years later during jury selection.
Ezequiel Carlos Ramirez went from a Visalia motel room in 2020 to a Tulare County courtroom years later, where he was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole plus 35 years for torturing and killing his 23-month-old son, Joziah Ramirez, and for seven felony counts tied to pimping, pandering and soliciting prostitution.
The Tulare County Superior Court handed down the sentence in Department 6, and the Tulare County District Attorney’s Office announced it on May 20, 2026. Ramirez, 28, had pleaded guilty during jury selection in March 2026 to first-degree murder with the special circumstance of torture, ending a case that began on June 5, 2020, inside a Motel 6 on Noble Avenue in Visalia.
Prosecutors said Ramirez was living there with Joziah and his girlfriend, Jasmine Blase, who was 18 at the time. They said the motel stay was part of Ramirez’s prostitution operation, and that he had gotten Blase pregnant when she was 15. Prosecutors also said he pimped her out along with at least one other woman.
Blase returned to the room and found Joziah unresponsive, then called 911. The child was found badly injured and unresponsive, taken to the hospital in critical condition, and later declared clinically dead at Valley Children’s Hospital. Prosecutors said he suffered multiple broken bones and head trauma, and the cause of death was blunt force trauma to the head.
Ramirez and Blase were both arrested in connection with the death, but prosecutors said Ramirez avoided arrest for four days. During that time, they said, he continued trying to recruit women into his prostitution operation. ABC30 Fresno reported in June 2020 that Visalia police, with help from state and federal officers, found Ramirez and arrested him in Fresno. At the time, prosecutors said he had been paroled in February after serving a little more than a year for second-degree robbery and unlawful sex with a minor.
Prosecutors described Joziah as smart, active and almost potty-trained, details that make the loss harder to shake. Assistant District Attorney Sean Sangree said the case brought resolution, not closure, and that is where the story now lands: a child’s short life, a documented pattern of abuse and exploitation, and a sentence that will keep Ramirez in prison for decades.
This article was produced by Prism’s automated news system from verified source data, official records, and press releases, then run through automated quality and moderation checks before publishing. The system is built and supervised by the people who set the standards it runs under. Read our full AI policy.
Did this article answer your question?
