What to Know
- A Bronx man allegedly beat a 4-year-old girl with an aluminum bat at an apartment in the Bronx
- The girl suffered injuries to her liver and was hospitalized in an intensive care unit
- The man told authorities the beating followed an argument with the girl's mother, who "is always putting me down"
A 32-year-old man has been arrested for allegedly beating a 4-year-old girl with an aluminum baseball bat at a home in the Bronx, according to court documents.
Noel Morales has been charged with assault, criminal possession of a weapon and endangering the welfare of a child. His bail was set at more than $250,000.
Authorities say Morales beat the girl at their Morrison Avenue apartment in the Soundview neighborhood on Saturday.
The girl’s mother was away at work when Morales allegedly took the bat from his room and hit the toddler three times on her back and abdomen, according to court documents.
“We were in the room, I don’t know what happened to me,” Morales said, according to the documents. “The baby started to play, and I punished her.”
The girl was hospitalized in the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit at New York-Presbyterian/Columbia University Medical Center. She had a number of injuries, including a laceration on her liver, internal bleeding in her liver, and acute bruising to her abdomen and back, authorities say.
Local
The girl is his daughter, according to the New York Post.
Morales allegedly told authorities that the beating followed an argument with the child’s mother. “She is always putting me down, and I always did everything for her. She always tells me she needs money, she needs to pay rent. She is always bothering me,” court documents quote Morales as saying.
Morales allegedly said the girl was not crying and that he “asked for her forgiveness. I asked her to forgive me. She did not tell me it hurt.”
It wasn’t immediately known if Morales had an attorney.
