PROVIDENCE — Zulmira Medeiros, a 79-year-old Portuguese immigrant, died a month ago. But before she slipped away, she pointed an accusing finger at her son, a man with a lengthy criminal record.

“I was coming out of the bathroom and he (my son) kicked me in the stomach,” she said in a brief statement to the police. “I grab the phone to call for help. My son push me and I fell down the stairs. I went to the street and called 911 for help.”

Medeiros signed the statement with a shaky hand.

Her son, Luis M. Medeiros, 47, was under court order not to contact his mother; nevertheless, he had been sharing her tenement apartment at 29 East Transit St. in Fox Point, according to the police. Based on her statement and other evidence, and while she was alive, he was criminally charged in the alleged attack.

Now that she has died, the Rhode Island state medical examiner is calling the case a homicide, and the police have intensified their investigation. Evidence is being presented by the attorney general’s office to a grand jury, police Maj. Stephen Campbell said yesterday, which could opt to upgrade the charge to murder.

The medical examiner ruled that Zulmira Medeiros died from “a systems organ failure associated with blunt traumatic injuries of the torso.” In other words, Campbell said, her injuries from the attack resulted in medical complications that caused her death.

The younger Medeiros is charged with domestic assault with a dangerous weapon, his foot; domestic assault of a person over the age of 60, with serious bodily injury resulting; and violation of a no-contact order, and he is being held at the Adult Correctional Institutions without bail. It could not be immediately determined if he has submitted a plea to any of the counts.

Due to his criminal record, which includes convictions for arson, robbery and simple assault, he has been targeted by the U.S. Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, for possible deportation to his native Portugal.

“It’s certainly not unheard of,” Campbell said of the son’s alleged attack on his mother. “An adult child with a criminal history, a history of domestic abuse, violence, alcohol abuse, and a disregard of court orders.”

From 1992 to 2006, at least 93 Rhode Islanders died as a result of domestic violence, according to the Rhode Island Coalition Against Domestic Violence. Nationally, 40 percent of the elders who are abused physically or in other ways are abused by their adult children.

“It’s a real tragic comment on our society that this happens,” said Deborah DeBare, coalition executive director.

Medeiros injured his mother in her second-floor apartment shortly before 7 a.m., June 9, according to Campbell, who said a reason for the attack remains a subject of investigation.

He kicked her in the stomach, Campbell said, and she tried unsuccessfully to telephone a relative. Then, according to the allegation, Medeiros pushed his mother down an exterior staircase at the rear of the apartment, causing her to tumble all the way to the bottom of a curving flight of 10 to 12 stairs.

The victim, according to the police and hospital records, suffered several broken ribs, a small spinal fracture and a bruised leg. While in the hospital, records show, she developed an infection in a lung and had to be placed on a respirator. She died Aug. 6.

The younger Medeiros was not present when the police responded to the incident. However, officers learned later that Medeiros was being held by ICE and asked that he be turned over, which he was on July 2.

ICE spokesman Michael W. Gilhooly said it would be against federal policy to disclose how Medeiros came to be in the United States, but Gilhooly said Medeiros’ criminal record makes him eligible for removal. ICE has filed an immigration detainer with state authorities, assuring the government that if Medeiros is released, he will be returned to ICE.

After the police obtained an arrest warrant for the suspect, but before they took him into custody, Medeiros appeared in District Court June 25 and pleaded no contest to a charge of domestic disorderly conduct, for having wrecked his mother’s apartment on Oct. 23, 2006. Judge Madeline Quirk imposed a suspended prison sentence of six months, with six months’ probation and an order that Medeiros receive domestic abuse counseling.

Armed with a search warrant, detectives recently returned to the apartment in order to photograph the scene of the alleged crime and to collect physical evidence such as blood, tissue and hair fibers. The lead investigator is Detective Sgt. William M. Dwyer Jr., assisted by Detectives Angelo A’Vant and John Mellor.

gsmith@projo.com