A Homestead father is accused of beating his 4-year-old, non-verbal son, who has autism, for roughly 25 minutes, an ordeal police say was caught on the family’s own surveillance cameras. Officers say the child was left with visible abrasions and red marks on his upper thighs, and police photographed the injuries before taking the father into custody. The suspect, 31-year-old David Martinez Jr., is facing a child-abuse charge.
The arrest came after Homestead police reviewed footage from indoor cameras that the family had installed for the child’s safety. Martinez appeared in bond court the next day, where a judge granted the victim’s mother a stay-away order and set bond at $2,500, according to CBS News.
Police: Surveillance Shows Repeated Strikes
Police say the incident happened in the 900 block of Northeast 33rd Terrace in Homestead at about 3:30 p.m., and an arrest affidavit describes a cycle of open-hand slaps, spanking and repeated blows with a belt. The report says Martinez repeatedly threw the boy onto a sofa, returned several times to strike him and at one point hit the bed with the belt while yelling at the child to stop crying. In-home surveillance allegedly captured roughly 25 minutes of the abuse, as reported by Local10.
Charges And Florida Law
Authorities booked Martinez on a charge of child abuse causing no great bodily harm. Under Florida law, the statute that defines child abuse and aggravated child abuse (Florida Statute 827.03) treats abuse that does not cause great bodily harm as a third-degree felony, while aggravated child abuse or acts that cause great bodily harm carry higher felony penalties. The statute lays out those distinctions and penalties in the Florida Statutes.
How This Fits With Other Local Cases
Advocates and law enforcement in South Florida have recently handled several disturbing cases involving alleged abuse of children with autism, including a June incident that prompted an arrest of a teacher in Hialeah and an earlier case in North Miami Beach where a child with autism suffered life-threatening injuries, as reported by NBC 6. Those cases have prompted renewed attention to how schools, caregivers and police spot and document abuse when victims have communication challenges.
Homestead police say the investigation is active. Officers documented and photographed the boy’s injuries, and Martinez was taken into custody while the case moves through the county’s court system, according to CBS News.
