‘Beat baby to stop crying’:

America

Edwards

An eight-year-old boy beat a baby girl to death to stop her crying while her mother was out partying at a nightclub, US police said Wednesday, charging him with murder.

The boy was one of several children left alone for hours in a Birmingham, Alabama home last month, in what experts said was a rare case of a child so young being prosecuted.

“Since becoming a police officer over 22 years ago, this is by far one of the saddest cases I have witnessed in my career,” Birmingham police spokesman Lieutenant Sean Edwards told AFP.

The incident happened at the home of a friend of the baby’s mother, whom police have identified as 26-year-old Katerra Lewis.

She has been charged with manslaughter over what Edwards called “reckless” actions.

Police said Lewis left her one-year-old, Kelci, together with several children aged two to eight, while she and her friend went out clubbing.

The children — six in total, according to local media — were left unsupervised while Lewis and the friend were gone from roughly 11:00 pm until 2:00 am.

“It is believed that while the mother and friend were at the club, the eight-yearold viciously attacked the one-year-old because the one-year-old would not stop crying,” police said in a statement.

“The one-year-old suffered from severe head trauma as well as major internal organ damage which ultimately led to her death.”

The mother told police on the morning of Oct 11, a Sunday, that she found the baby unresponsive in her crib.

The girl was treated at the scene by first responders and was later pronounced dead at a children’s hospital.

“This type of behavior, this type of irresponsibility on behalf of a parent is totally