Turlock, California man kills baby and is shot to death by police

[celeb_2006]

Man kills baby and is shot to death by police

06-15) 12:12 PDT -- A young Turlock man parked a pickup truck on a dark country road outside his Central Valley city Saturday night, removed a baby boy from a car seat and then viciously beat the child in the street, fighting off passersby who tried to stop him until he was fatally shot by a police officer whose helicopter landed in a nearby pasture, police said today.
The 27-year-old suspect died immediately where he fell. The child, who according to police appeared to be 12 to 24 months old, was rushed to a hospital but was soon pronounced dead as well.
Police officials declined to identify the man this morning and said they did not yet know who the child was - or what his relationship was to his attacker. No information was immediately available about the baby's mother.
The suspect "had tunnel vision," said Stanislaus County sheriff's deputy Royjindar Singh, a department spokesman. "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."
Singh said investigators were working hard to answer a series of questions about the shocking case, including why the suspect stopped in the roadway, where he was coming from and where he was going. Singh said he did not know whether the suspect was under the influence of alcohol or drugs.
The beating and subsequent shooting happened near a dairy farm along two-lane West Bradbury Road, between South BlakerRoad and South Central Avenue, in an unincorporated area about 10 miles west of downtown Turlock and 20 miles south of Modesto. The rural road, which extends straight west from Highway 99, has no lights.
Singh said an elderly couple driving along West Bradbury Road just after 10 p.m. made the first 911 call to police, reporting that the suspect's Toyota pickup truck was parked facing west in the eastbound lane. According to the caller, the suspect was brutally beating the baby boy behind the truck.
The couple had poor cell phone reception and did not give a precise address, delaying the response by a few minutes, Singh said. But soon, he said, other witnesses called as well - some of the witnesses began trying to halt the attack on the baby, who was punched and kicked and stomped on the pavement.
"One tried to intervene and the suspect pushed him off and continued assaulting the baby," Singh said.
By 10:13 p.m., a dispatcher had confirmed the correct location and broadcast it, Singh said, but it was so remote that the first officers to arrive were aboard a sheriff's department helicopter that had been patrolling over Turlock. The pilot, a sheriff's deputy, and the tactical flight officer, a Modesto city police officer landed in a cow pasture just off the roadway at about 10:19 p.m., Singh said.
He said the flight officer then ran about 20 yards toward the suspect and, while standing behind the pasture's fence, ordered him to stop beating the child, who was on the ground.
"He refuses to comply with the orders and the officer fires," Singh said, "resulting in the death of the suspect."
Firefighters from a nearby station arrived a few minutes later and tried desperately to resuscitate the child before the baby was rushed to Emanuel Medical Center in Turlock. Despite all this, Singh said that the baby died before arrival at the hospital.
By the time the ambulance left, Singh said, nearly a dozen people had witnessed some part of the incident, with at least two trying to physically stop the suspect.
"The two officers on the helicopter, they were pretty shook up about it," Singh said. "We have to kind of expect this in our line of work. But for people who were just driving home, they weren't prepared for this. They're watching a helpless baby die in front of them and they're trying to intervene, but all their efforts aren't doing anything."

[heart_leigh]

Omigosh! That's awful!

[msdeb]

Turlock is a shit hole, my brother lived there.

[TonjaLasagna]

That's why I keep an old-fashioned wood baseball bat in my car.......just in case I come across someone like this guy.

[twitchy]

probably seriously mentally ill

[McJag]

Awful-poor baby.

[Just Kill Me]

I would have been out of my mind with rage trying to stop this man; I just don't understand this shit at all.

[A*O]

I'm pretty hardened to stories of assholes being assholes, but sometimes you hear a story like this that makes me seriously despair at how despicable human beings can be. Sorry to our bleeding heart civil liberatarians, but this guy deserved to die and a bullet was probably way too quick.

[cataroo]

On another board I read, there's a member that lives 6 miles from where this happened. He posted this from his local newspaper this morning:

TURLOCK — A crazed man parked on a dark country road Saturday night, took a baby boy from the car seat in his pickup and beat the child to death until a Modesto police officer, dropped on the scene by helicopter, shot the man dead, authorities said.

Passerbys calling 911 at 10:13 p.m. described a horrific scene on West Bradbury Road near the intersection of South Blaker Road in rural Stanislaus County, 10 miles west of Turlock. At least one tried to stop the 27-year-old attacker, who swung and slammed the child into the asphalt and stomped on him behind his parked four-door Toyota pickup.

"In the shadows and light it looked like he had hit an animal," said Dan Robinson, the chief of Crows Landing Volunteer Fire Department, who came upon the chaos on his way home from a late dinner in Turlock. "As we backed up again, I could see that he had blood on his arms. I could see that it was a small child."

Robinson, 52, jumped from his vehicle and confronted the man, who lunged at him. Robinson said the man wasn't screaming and wasn't loud, but was forceful, saying "demons" were in the boy.

"Give me the knife. Give me the knife," the man said as he grabbed for a pen in the fireman's front pocket.

"There was a total hollowness in his eyes," Robinson said, "like I could see right through to the back of his head."

A Stanislaus County Sheriff's Department helicopter, flown by a deputy with a Modesto police officer in the second seat, was on patrol in the Turlock area. It arrived six minutes after the first 911 call, said deputy Royjindar Singh, the sheriff's spokesman.

"The helicopter spotlights the scene and sees this guy just beating on this infant or baby in the middle of the road. I can't imagine what that looked like," Singh said.

The helicopter landed in a nearby cow pasture and the Modesto police officer jumped out. He drew his service pistol and commanded the man to stop from about 10 feet away from behind a set of electric and barbwire fences. The officer yelled at the passerbys to get out of the way. When the man "continued to stomp the child," the officer fired, Singh said.
"They intervened to try and save that infant's life. They thought they could change the outcome of this thing," Singh said.

The officer's name, the number of times he fired and where the dead man was shot were not released Sunday. The officer was placed on paid administrative leave, which is departmental policy for all officer-involved shootings.

The child was rushed to Emanuel Medical Center in Turlock, where he was pronounced dead.

Authorities would not disclose the identity of the dead man or his relationship to the boy. Singh said the boy was 12 to 24 months old, but DNA testing may be required to identify him because he was beaten beyond recognition.

"Our firefighter was doing CPR on the baby when I arrived," said Mountain View Fire Chief Kevin Blount, who was there shortly after the shooting. "It's never easy, but it's always harder with little children, especially in circumstances like this."

Confusion and spotty cell phone coverage had dozens of police scrabbling through Ceres and Turlock until the location became clear. The violence, Singh said, was so graphic from the helicopter's birds-eye view that there was no hesitation on the part of the officer, who shot the attacker dead less the two minutes on the scene.

Dozens of law enforcement personnel, set up under giant spotlights, worked through the night trying to piece together what happened. The attacker and the child were traveling west, but the gold truck was parked in the wrong lane, facing oncoming traffic.

By Sunday afternoon, the investigators had cleared out.

Short rows of fresh-planted corn lined one side of the road, cows were pastured in another. The helicopter rotors washed a big dirt circle into the green pasture.

Two long, dark bloodstains streaked the road.

Neighbors mingled on the fenceline of nearby Thomas Dairy asking the same questions as investigators: Was the attacker on drugs? Mentally ill? All of the above? Why did it happen here?

Isabelle Thomas, who lives a few hundred yards from the scene, was working at Emanuel Medical Center, a nurse in the surgical unit, when her son called her with word something bad had happened. Soon she heard of the little boy who died 500 yards from her front door.

"I couldn't go to sleep. I couldn't rest without seeing it and all that blood. I couldn't believe all that blood," she said.

Sunday morning, she watched a tow truck haul away the pickup. The inside cab, she said, was smeared with blood. A rosary swung from the rearview mirror.

"I've been here 53 years," said her brother, John Thomas, "and I've never seen anything like this. I've never seen anything like this before."

[Sarzy]

F*ck! That's sick. Being shot was too easy a death for that guy.

[celeb_2006]

Damn cataroo, that is horrific, original story was bad enough but to read now that he stomped on the baby, and it was beyond recognition, I cannot imagine now how bad it was on the scene.

[cataroo]

Originally Posted by celeb_2006

Damn cataroo, that is horrific, original story was bad enough but to read now that he stomped on the baby, and it was beyond recognition, I cannot imagine now how bad it was on the scene.

Equally as tragic is the fact that no one will ever know exactly WHY this had to happen ...

Sad all the way around...

[KandyKorn]

This, honestly, is the absolute worst thing I've ever read. I can't imagine what the witnesses are going through. Unbelievable.

[twitchy]

Originally Posted by A*O

Sorry to our bleeding heart civil liberatarians,

You have got to be joking. Civil liberties have absolutely nothing to do with this. Nobody was suggesting otherwise. This was a real emergency situation that demanded immediate action which the officer appropriately took.

[blissfullyunaware]

This story is beyond sad, that poor baby! I'm glad that fucken guy is dead, although I wish he got it like that baby did.