Our motivation was to know the prevalence of the condition in which we find to be the worst possible outcome of violence against children in Costa Rica: death, to facilitate the work of creating health policies that protect this population with a constitutional guarantee of special protection. We obtained that the Costa Rican incidence of violent death under age 18 in 2010 was 12.31 per 100 000 children and 3.72 per 100 000 inhabitants. It is also remarkable that a high incidence was found: in the age extremes (0-1 and 16-17), in men, early in the year, caused by asphyxia or accident and in the province of San José.

Child; Underage; Violent Death; Violence; Autopsy