We are following the brutal beating of an Oklahoma child who is just two years old. It happened after police say the child’s mother let her live in boyfriend, 21 year old Andrew Smith, watch the toddler.
There is really no sign a little girl live here. There are no toys in the yard or in the windows.
“They’ve not been over there much over a month,” one neighbor said.
But in that short month police say something horrible happened to the little girl. Authorities believe Smith is the one who did it.
“There’s very severe bruising to the head and face,” Caddo County Assistant DA Cory Ortega said. “Both eyes are swollen shut. The right leg is disfigured to the point where it looks like there is a compound fracture perhaps.”
Police arrested Smith after they say he gave them several different versions of what happened and none of them made sense.
Court records say the first story Smith gave them was that he was playing football with his cousin, and his cousin “accidentally knocked the child in the grass” and that Smith got mad at him and “beat his a**.”
Police tracked down that cousin, and he told them Smith’s story was not true.
“He denied any contact with him,” Ortega said. “He actually had texts from the defendant telling him to go along with the story.”
Police say on the day the child was injured someone eventually called the mother and told her her daughter was hurt. She hurried home and found Smith walking with the little girl down the road.
Days later, no answer at the family’s door, and, so far, no good enough explanation for police.
“It’s scattered from him grabbing the child’s arm and pulling her into a wall. Whether it was falling on her while playing football, the kid fell into a table, none of his stories really add up or go along with the injuries,” Ortega said.
Police say Smith smelled of alcohol when he was arrested that same day. He was charged with felony child abuse. NewsChannel Four did reach out to Smith’s family, but they had nothing to say at this time. As for the little girl, she was still in the hospital Friday night.
