Police officials are not revealing the identity of a man who beat and stomped a baby boy to death on a country road near Turlock California.
The baby was removed from the man's truck and brutally beaten to death.
A 27-year-old man stopped his truck on a two-lane country road near a dairy ranch on Saturday night. The area is about 10 miles west of downtown Turlock and 20 miles south of Modesto.
The man removed the toddler, who appeared to be one to two years old, from a car seat and threw him on the ground behind his truck.
According to the Associated Press the began to brutally beat the little boy by kicking, punching and stomping him to death.
An elderly couple driving by saw the man beating the child and called 911. Due to their poor cell phone reception and not giving the police a precise address it delayed the police response by a few minutes.
According to SFGate soon after they received other calls and were able to respond. There were some who attempted to stop the attack on the baby who was being shaken, punched, kicked and stomped on the pavement.
Stanislaus County sheriff's deputy Royjindar Singh, a department spokesman said,
"The suspect "had tunnel vision. "As people tried to intervene, to tackle him, he just went back to what he was doing. Anything and everything he could do to the baby, that's what he was doing."
"It's shocking that someone is doing this. I can't imagine driving and seeing somebody doing this to an infant."
MercuryNews.com
reported that there was a Stanislaus County sheriff's helicopter in the area and they responded to the call within six minutes of the first call. The officers in the helicopter could see the man beating the child and decided to land in a field near the man's truck as the patrol deputies were still several minutes away.
A Modesto police officer, the helicopter's tactical flight officer drew his gun and ran toward the suspect but was unable to reach the road because of an electric and barbed wire fence.
Singh said,
"When the flight officer first contacted the suspect and tried to get him to stop, the infant was on the ground and the suspect was kicking and stomping the child. The officer demanded the man stop, but he just continued his assault."
The police officer then shot and killed the suspect. The baby was taken to Emanuel Medical Center in Turlock and was pronounced dead shortly after arrival.
MercuryNews.com
reported that Stanislaus County sheriff's investigators spent Sunday trying to determine why the man beat the baby to death.
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Stanislaus County sheriff's Deputy Royjindar Singh said Sunday evening
."It's been a long day. Just talking to officers and deputies who were out there and for myself being a dad, this hits home, especially on Father's Day. The way that infant died was inhumane."
The deputies are trying to establish the relationship between the 27-year-old man and the little boy. The boys identity is believed to be known but according to Singh,
"due to the severity of his injuries making a visual identification is nearly impossible. "That in itself tells of the brutality of this attack."
The police are hoping to contact the family soon but it appears that many of them live outside of the area.
Singh said "We're trying to contact family members.
Some of the key questions we're trying to answer is why this happened? What was going on before the suspect left? Where was he going? Where had he been? What was going on in his life that day?"
