PSYCHO ‘PUNCH’ KILLS KID
Mom’s beau ‘picks fight’ with 2-yr.-old
A New Jersey man picked a fight with his girlfriend’s 2-year-old son, telling the defenseless toddler to put up his dukes before allegedly beating him to death.
Zachary Tricoche, 24, of Pennsauken, was arraigned Tuesday in Camden County Superior Court on murder charges after his alleged beatdown of little Jamil Baskerville Jr., who weighed 29 pounds.
Tricoche was then transferred to the Camden County jail, where he’s being held on $1 million cash bail.
Just prior to the Saturday-night attack, Tricoche had gotten into a heated argument with his girlfriend over food she had bought that he didn’t like, prosecutors said.
He became so angry that he shoved his girlfriend, causing her son to cry, prosecutors said.
Tricoche then allegedly challenged the boy to a fight by ordering him to put up his pint-size fists. The brute then repeatedly slugged the child in the chest, knocking him clear across a table and sending him flying into a wall, prosecutors said.
Tricoche’s girlfriend called 911, telling police her son was vomiting before he had fallen unconscious. He was rushed to Cooper University Hospital, where he was later pronounced dead.
A medical examiner’s report said the boy had sustained a crushed liver and died of internal bleeding.
The child’s grandfather, Gerome DeShields, blasted Tricoche for picking a fight with a toddler.
“You’re less of a man to sit there and put your hands on any type of child, no matter what age it is,” DeShields told reporters after Tricoche’s arraignment. “He was 2 years old. There should be no reason you should want to hit him.”
Sadly, the tot is the third 2-yearold from New Jersey to die in less than three months — and the second to be killed by an adult.
In June, little Miley Mitchell, of Jersey City, was found dead inside her crib after her mother — who was charged with endangering the welfare of a child — left her unattended for nearly 12 hours.
A month later, Ariana Taylor, of Gloucester City, died of blunt- force trauma to the head after allegedly being sexually assaulted and pummeled by her mother’s boyfriend, who was later charged with murder.