An Illinois resident faced charges of battery last week for abusing his two-month-old baby, admitting he felt “overstimulated and overwhelmed” while caring for the infant.
According to the Peoria County State Attorney’s Office, the Bartonville Police were alerted to a child abuse incident by the Department of Children and Family Services on June 3. The caseworker reported that they had been summoned to the hospital earlier that day to meet with the baby’s mother. She mentioned that she had entrusted her baby to 24-year-old Gabriel A. King on June 2 while she was at work.
In the afternoon, King reportedly called the mother to say the baby wouldn’t stop crying. When she returned home that evening, she noted “the baby was screaming in a way she had never heard before.” Upon changing the baby’s diaper, she noticed bruises and consequently took the infant to the hospital.
Doctors said the patterned bruising and injuries on the child were indicative of abuse and were not accidental. The child had three separate brain bleeds, the doctors said, as well as a broken arm near the shoulder.
King told police that the baby fell and that he grabbed the child’s arm, adding that the infant “might have hit something and that he may have handled the baby too roughly, but he could not recall much of what transpired that day.”
King was arrested on June 13. He was denied bond at a hearing on Tuesday.
