A Florida father is accused of killing his baby son by beating him. He reportedly told police that he did it because the baby’s crying was making him “stressed.”
An arrest warrant document that PEOPLE looked at says that 25-year-old Edrick Lamar Davis of Melbourne is charged with first-degree murder of a child and aggravated child abuse.
A 911 call was made about an infant who was not responding or breathing around 11 a.m. on June 10. Melbourne police officers and paramedics from the Melbourne Fire Department attended.
The 6-week-old was taken to a nearby hospital, but even though people tried to save his life, he was declared dead, the document says.
As the affidavit says, the officer who went to the hospital saw a small bruise on the baby’s left shoulder and scratches on his face, but no other obvious signs of physical abuse.
The officer talked to Davis, who told them that the baby was healthy and didn’t have any known health problems that could have caused his death.
The following morning, he talked to the detective about giving the baby milk and putting the baby to sleep on his right side.
The statement says that when he got out of the shower 15 to 20 minutes later, he saw his son “unresponsive” with medicine coming out of his nose and not breathing.
For as long as the 911 operator told him to, he put the baby on the floor and did CPR on them until help came.
The statement says that on June 11, the Brevard County Medical Examiner’s Office did an autopsy and found that the baby had died from multiple blows to the head. It says in the affidavit that the medical examiner found injuries that were “believed to have occurred in a forceful and intentional manner just before his death.”
The document says that the medical examiner also found signs of broken bones and physical abuse that were still healing.
A second interview with police on June 11 found Davis repeating what he had already told officers about what he thought had happened the morning his son died, according to the affidavit.
When the detective told Davis that the baby’s death was caused by a serious brain injury, Davis at first said he didn’t know how that injury happened.
The statement says that “upon further questioning, he admitted responsibility” for the baby’s death.
The affidavit says, “He described ‘accidentally’ hitting (the baby’s) head with his knee while trying to keep him from falling out of his arms” and showed this on a doll.
The document says that the “defendant admitted” that he “forcefully struck the back of (the baby’s) head with his knee at least two times” on June 10, 2010, around 10:45 a.m., while the mother of the baby was in the shower.
The statement says he said the baby “was fussy and crying, which made him feel stressed.”
The affidavit says Davis “admitted that his actions alone caused (the baby’s) death” even though he said they were “unintentional.”
The affidavit says that he wrote in an apology letter that he hit the baby because “he lost control due to stress and was not in his right mind.”
Davis might have hired a lawyer to talk for him, but it’s not clear.
Without bail, he is still being held in the Brevard County Jail. He is set to go back to court in July.
