Kin vs. kin as teen dad pleads innocent to slay
RELATIVES OF a 16-monthold baby who prosecutors say was beaten to death by her father got into a shouting match at court Monday after he was arraigned on murder charges.
“Baby killer! Murdered my grandbaby, he’s a murderer,” Janice Munford, the great-grandmother of little Nylah Lewis, yelled at Shaquan Taylor in Brooklyn Supreme Court.
Taylor, whose lawyer entered a not guilty plea, didn’t turn around or acknowledge the grieving great-grandma in court.
Taylor’s father, however, laced into her after the arraignment.
“There’s two sides to the story. That’s my granddaughter, too!” shouted Taylor’s father to Munford in a courthouse hallway.
He said the girl and her mother, Tammy Lewis, should not have been at Taylor’s Brooklyn apartment in the first place.
“Her daughter had an order of protection just like my son had an order of protection — why is she over there with my son at his place?” asked the angry grandfather, who refused to give his name.
Munford again yelled back that Taylor was “a killer,” and court officers had to separate the families.
Prosecutors contend that Taylor, 19, beat little Nylah during a Father’s Day visit.
She died five days later from multiple skull fractures and bleeding on the brain. In a jailhouse interview with the Daily News, Taylor denied doing anything to his daughter. First, he claimed Nylah fell off the toilet at his Coney Island apartment while he was cleaning her face. He says he grabbed her by the legs as she fell. Taylor later told The News that he took a shower and heard a loud thud from the living room where he left the toddler all alone on a couch and found her on a hardwood floor. Court papers show he made incriminating statements to the cops. “He was angry with the child’s mother for taking too long and blacked out and punched her,” according to newly released statements Taylor allegedly gave police about the incident. If convicted, Taylor faces up to 25 years to life in prison.