A thirty-year-old man in Pennsylvania is charged with killing a twenty-one-month-old child who was under his care. The man allegedly became irate when his girlfriend’s child cried and punched the boy in the stomach until he passed away.
Authorities said that Enrique Lopez Gomez was brought into custody on Thursday and charged with several related felonies, including one allegation of third-degree murder and one count of involuntary manslaughter.
“This Defendant brutally injured a toddler under his care, failed to get the child medical care, and caused his death. It’s difficult to fathom how someone could do this,” said in a statement on Thursday that it is hard to understand how someone could do this.
A news statement from the District Attorney’s Office states that on June 24, 2024, at 10:58 p.m., detectives from the Chester County Detectives responded to a 911 call concerning an unresponsive child at a home in Kennett Township, Pennsylvania, which is located about 30 miles west of Philadelphia.
When they arrived, the mother of the victim walked out of the house with the young child in a blanket and gave him to the emergency medical staff.
The victim did not have a pulse and “had white foam coming from his nose and mouth.” The boy had bruises on his body when the ambulance arrived, and the doctors informed the police right away.
The boy passed away on June 25 at 12:16 a.m. in a hospital. According to police, an autopsy revealed that the child’s cause of death was blunt force injuries to the abdomen, and that the manner of death was homicide.
“The joint investigation by the Chester County Detectives, Kennett Township Police Department, and Southern Chester County Police Department determined that the Defendant struck the child, causing the injuries that led to his death,” prosecutors stated.
