Prodigy’s Parents Can’t Agree on Custody Pact

SANTA CRUZ — Parents of an 11-year-old university graduate placed in a foster home while his father faces felony child endangerment charges failed Friday to agree on a proposed temporary custody arrangement.

Santa Cruz County Juvenile Court Judge Thomas Black ordered Adragon De Mello to remain in the foster home until a contested custody hearing in Superior Court on Nov. 10, according to Paul Meltzer, attorney for the boy’s father, Agustin De Mello.

“It could only have been settled today if all parties agreed to the recommendation” on custody, said Patricia Vorreiter, an attorney for the boy’s mother, Cathy Gunn.

Vorreiter would not say who had made the recommendation on temporary custody. It could have been made by county health officials, who supervised placement of the boy in a foster home or by either of the parents.

A temporary custody agreement is needed until charges against the father are resolved.

Agustin De Mello was arrested Sept. 20 after being released from Dominican Hospital, where police took him the day before for psychiatric evaluation after searching his home.

Gunn was quoted in an affidavit filed in support of the search warrant as saying the boy’s father had a “suicide pact with his son in the past” when Adragon’s academic career seemed to be in jeopardy.

The search was prompted after Gunn reported Agustin De Mello made several threats of violence. Police found five loaded handguns and suitcases filled with ammunition.

De Mello said the guns were old and not usable. No charges on their possession have been filed. He denied a suicide pact.

Gunn said she and De Mello never married, but she lived with him and their son until being forced to leave last year, according to the Santa Cruz Sentinel.

The boy received national attention after he entered Cabrillo College at the age of 8. He earned a bachelor’s degree in mathematics at UC Santa Cruz last spring, becoming the world’s youngest college graduate, according to the Guinness Book of World Records.

His father boasted that his son spoke his first words at the age of 2 months and began doing complex science and math as a toddler. The 59-year-old unemployed father said he wanted Adragon to have two doctoral degrees by the age of 16 and a Nobel Prize by 20.

De Mello is free on $5,000 bail and faces arraignment Oct. 20.