‘Absolute Terror’: Police Say Barber Babysitting 6-Year-Old Boy Beat Him to Death with Lumber After Pants-Wetting Incident
Ernest Lamar Love (left) was babysitting Chance Crawford (right) when he allegedly beat the boy with a piece of lumber for peeing his pants, officials said.
Sept. 6 2024, Published 1:49 p.m. ET
A barber in California has been arrested after police say he allegedly beat a 6-year-old boy to death for peeing his pants, RadarOnline.com can reveal.
Around 6:30 p.m. on Aug. 29, the mother of Chance Crawford dropped the boy off at the barber shop of 41-year-old Ernest Lamar Love in Placentia, according to the Orange County District Attorney’s Office.
The boy's mother dropped him off with Ernest Lamar Love to babysit while she worked, officials said.
Love was babysitting the boy was his mother worked at her job as a nurse’s assistant at St. Joseph’s Hospital in Orange County.
Authorities said Love later took the boy to a local park, and around 10:30 p.m., Love could be seen on surveillance video walking into his barber shop carrying a “large piece of raw lumber with a reluctant Chance following behind him," law enforcement officials said.
Surveillance footage caught Love taking the boy to the park a little while later.
Around three hours later, police said, Love reportedly carried the boy, who was unconscious and struggling to breath, into the emergency room at Children’s Hospital of Orange County.
Three hours after returning from the park, Love can be seen carrying the boy into the emergency room at a local children's hospital, police said.
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According to authorities, doctors found “much of Chance’s flesh was missing from his buttocks, leaving raw, gaping wounds, along with subdural hematoma, extreme brain swelling and other injuries consistent with violent shaking.”
Chance also had a healing fracture on his shoulder blade.
Doctors said they found many wounds on the victim, determining Love beat the boy with a piece of lumber and pouring hydrogen peroxide on his open wounds.
Love allegedly beat the boy with a piece of lumber and poured hydrogen peroxide on his open wounds, officials said. He then is accused of forcing Chance to do push-ups, sit-ups and jumping jacks until the boy collapsed.
On Sept. 3, the 6-year-old died from his injuries.
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Love was arrested and charged with murder, child abuse, and torture, according to authorities.
He pleaded not guilty and was being held without bond. If convicted on all counts, he faces up to 32 years to life in prison.
In a statement, Orange County District Attorney Todd Spitzer said, “While his new classmates were celebrating the end of the first week of first grade, Chance’s seat in his classroom was empty as he fought for his life in a hospital bed. Words do not exist to describe the absolute terror this little boy was forced to endure — all at the hands of someone who was supposed to be protecting him, not torturing him to death.”
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