Daniel Auster has been charged with manslaughter in the death of his ten month old daughter. According to police reports Daniel Auster was looking after his infant daughter when she would die. Autopsy reports would show that the ten month old girl died from a fentanyl and heroin overdose. Daniel Auster, who is the son of famed author Paul Auster. Daniel Auster would be arrested following the toxicology reports and charged with manslaughter.
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The investigation into a 10-month-old’s death in Brooklyn last fall has turned criminal, with police arresting her father and charging him with manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide in her fatal overdose.
A medical autopsy following the death of Ruby Auster on Nov. 1, determined the baby died of “acute intoxication” from the combination of fentanyl and heroin, police said. Emergency personnel transported the child from a Park Slope address to a nearby hospital, but life-saving measures were not successful.
More than five months after her death, police arrested the child’s father, Daniel Auster. He was arrested in Williamsburg and criminally charged after conferral with the district attorney’s office in Brooklyn.
Attorney information for Auster was not immediately known.
The New York Times reported that the 44-year-old is the son of noted author, Paul Auster, who penned best sellers “City of Glass” and “4 3 2 1.” The novelist declined to comment on the case.
Police arrested Daniel Auster 24 years after he was arrested on charges of possession of stolen property for stealing $3,000 from Andrew Melendez, a drug dealer killed in a notorious murder case in 1996. Auster pleaded guilty but was not implicated in the killing, The Times said.
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The troubled son of renowned author Paul Auster has been arrested for the Brooklyn drug overdose death of his 10-month-old daughter while he was watching the infant last November, police said Saturday.
Daniel Auster, 44, claimed he fell asleep with little Ruby napping on his chest and awoke to find the baby lifeless inside a Park Slope apartment on Nov. 1, police sources said
While an initial autopsy showed no signs of physical or internal trauma, subsequent toxicology tests determined the infant was killed by an overdose of fentanyl and heroin, sources indicated. Auster was charged Friday with manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide.
A high-ranking police source said Auster made some incriminating statements. According to sources, he called 911 and performed CPR on Ruby before cops arrived. The child died at Methodist Hospital.
A police spokesman couldn’t say Saturday how Ruby was exposed to the drugs, but noted that the tot was in the father’s care while her mother was at work.
A woman who answered the door at the apartment where the child was sickened, did not want to speak.
Auster’s father is the acclaimed author of “The New York Trilogy,” “The Book of Illusions,” “The Music of Chance” and “Moon Palace,” and wrote the screenplay for the 1995 Wayne Wang film “Smoke.”
“No, I don’t want to talk about it,” Paul Auster told the Daily News on Saturday. “Will you please go away?”
Instagram photos of the father and daughter posted after the death showed Auster with the baby on his shoulders on a sunny day in the park and dressed as the Tin Man for Halloween as he held the sleeping little girl.
Auster’s name surfaced in the infamous 1996 “Club Kid Killing” of Andre “Angel” Melendez, 26, a Colombian immigrant, who got the nickname Angel because he wore feather-covered wings to Manhattan clubs, including the Tunnel and the Limelight.
“Club Kid” Michael Alig and his roommate Robert Riggs pleaded to manslaughter in the murder and dismemberment of Melendez, a reputed Manhattan club scene drug hustler.
Riggs told police he intervened when Melendez attacked Alig during a fight over money. Riggs said he hit Melendez in the head with a hammer and Alig held a pillow over his face until he died.
They left the body in a bathtub for a week, then cut off the legs and dumped the pieces into the Hudson River. Melendez’s torso washed up on Staten Island.
Then 20-year-old Auster pleaded guilty to stealing $3,000 from Melendez after the grisly crime. He was sentenced to five years probation.
Alig served 17 years in prison and died of a drug overdose in 2020. Riggs spent 13 years behind bars for the killing.
Daniel Auster’s rap sheet includes a handful of arrests in the late 2000s, for drug possession in 2008 and 2010 and petty larceny and possession of stolen property in 2009, authorities said.