Boy, 4, dies in Brooklyn apartment, family says stepfather beat him
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A 4-year-old boy died inside a Brooklyn apartment Sunday morning as his mother frantically flagged down cops saying his stepfather was beating up the tot, police said.
The panicked mother and neighbors alerted cops patrolling the Gowanus Houses on Baltic St. near Hoyt St. in Gowanus the boy, identified by cops as Jaycee Eubanks, was being assaulted about 5:35 a.m., police said.
Before entering the unit, cops visited a neighbor’s apartment where the victim’s 6-year-old brother had fled. The brother told police that their stepfather was attacking his defenseless younger sibling.
Cops found the 27-year-old stepfather inside the unit along with Jaycee.
”I heard a lot of screaming,” said a neighbor in the building who gave her name just as Hinda. “‘He can’t breathe, he can’t breathe,’ that’s what I heard. I was sleeping, and I was so scared to go out and see what was going on.”
“A woman was screaming, a man was screaming,” she added. “There was a lot of people.”
The stepfather was taken into custody and was being questioned at PSA 1, a police precinct for public housing in the area. No charges were immediately filed.
Police also received a 911 call for a man, presumably the stepfather, trying to commit suicide inside the family’s apartment but police found him unhurt.
The city medical examiner will conduct an autopsy to determine Jaycee’s official cause of death.
