SANTA ANA (CNS) – A 41-year-old man was charged Wednesday with torturing and killing a 6-year-old boy in Placentia.
Ernest Lamar Love was charged with murder, assault on a child with force likely to produce great bodily injury resulting in death and torture, all felonies. He is also facing a sentencing enhancement for causing great bodily injury that left the victim comatose.
Love is accused of killing 6-year-old Chance Crawford, according to the Orange County District Attorney’s Office.
The boy’s mother, who was working a night shift as a nurse’s assistant at St. Joseph’s Hospital, dropped her son off with Love at 6:30 p.m., Thursday, at his barbershop to watch him, prosecutors said.
Love is accused of beating the boy to death with a piece of lumber when the child wet his pants while at a park, prosecutors said. Love brought the boy to the emergency room at Children’s Hospital of Orange County about 1:30 a.m. Friday, and the victim died Tuesday afternoon, prosecutors said.
The defendant allegedly beat the boy with the block of wood and poured hydrogen peroxide on his open wounds before making the boy do push-ups and other exercises, prosecutors alleged.
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