Murdered infant/Photo courtesy NY Daily News
An infant was murdered by her mother’s boyfriend when her crying became a nuisance to his video game pursuits, reported the Daily News.
The suspect, Ricardo Price, allegedly beat the baby girl causing severe head trauma. Now her mother, Eryca Kemp, is speaking out.
Ricardo Price, 23, was initially charged with assault and attempted murder in the beating of the 4-month-old baby. However, since the infant died on July 1, those charges will likely be upgraded. The medical examiner ruled that the death was a homicide caused by the kind of head trauma that stems from abuse.
The brutal boyfriend was babysitting the infant in an apartment in Bedford-Stuyvesant, where he resides with another girlfriend when the baby, named Royalty, was killed.
Eryca Kemp, the infant’s mother, said that she met her boyfriend on a dating app back in November. The incident happened on June 21.
“The only reason he gave was that she wouldn’t stop crying,” she said. He also asked the grieving mother for forgiveness.
Eryca Kemp had left her baby with her boyfriend to run an errand. She was already asleep. When her mother returned around 10:30 a.m. the next day, she tried to wake the infant but could get no response from her.
The mother had left the infant with her boyfriend on two other occasions without any problems. He had gone to pay a fine and retrieve something for her 6-year-old son. She also has a 1-year-old.
According to police, Ricardo Price threw the baby up against the wall and repeatedly struck her in the head with a video game controller.
On June 22, both mother and boyfriend went to the police station after the infant was admitted to the hospital, and Price came clean. He said he tried to bounce the baby on his lap to get her quiet but did not think he had been so forceful that she would be as badly injured. He was arrested the same day.
Thankfully, Ricardo Price is now at Riker’s Island without bail.