An Illinois man was charged last week with battery for abusing his two-month-old baby after he admitted he was “overstimulated and overwhelmed” while taking care of his child.
The Peoria County State Attorney’s Office said that Bartonville Police received a report of child abuse from the Department of Children and Family Services on June 3. The caseworker reported they were called to the hospital earlier that day and spoke with the infant’s mother, who said she’d left the baby with 24-year-old Gabriel A. King on June 2 while she went to work.
In the afternoon, the mother said, King called and said the baby would not stop crying. When she arrived home that evening, she said, “the baby was screaming in a way she had never heard before.” She noticed bruising when she changed the child’s diaper, so they 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.
