A Minnesota man was arrested for beating his girlfriend’s 2-year-old son to death.
Joshua Isaiah Lockhart Jr. died after suffering severe injuries to his head as well as other injuries, which were sustained when 21-year-old Quran J. Mitchell attacked him. At the time of the boy’s death, Mitchell was on probation after being sentenced to 90 days in a workhouse for a misdemeanor domestic assault conviction.
Mitchell also had a misdemeanor disorderly conduct conviction following a fight in 2015.
The night that baby Joshua was brought to the hospital, Star Tribune reported, doctors found that the injuries and bruises he had on his head, eyes, left arm, shoulder, ear, forehead and cheek were “all indicative of child abuse,” according to a statement from the county attorney’s office.
Mitchell admitted to police that he hit the boy numerous times, and had been beating him for two months before the baby’s death — during which time the child and mother were living with him. Mitchell said that the boy was sick and he’d been having trouble getting him to bed, and further admitted to hitting Joshua in the face with a flip-flop “no more than five times.”
Many readers called for the man to be punished to the fullest extent of the law, and also called for the baby’s mother to be investigated.
“What about that child’s useless mother? You can’t convince me that after living with this POS for two months she did not know what was going on with her child! She needed to be charged too,” one reader commented on Right Stuff’s Facebook page.
“Mom should have not moved in with him in the first place…. AND a boyfriend that you recently met and not know well, should never be left alone with a small defenseless child THAT IS NOT HIS OWN,” another wrote.
“Children cry and fuss and someone that is not ‘vested’ in the child will lose patients fast and get tired of the child’s fussing and crying and needing to eat and have their diaper changed , and frankly just needing attention.”
“If this child had been abused for two months, where was the mother all that time! Why didn’t she see what was happening before the child was killed?” another added.
“Hang that SOB and be done with it. Mothers need to start serving time to, for not protecting there children these days, That was going on for 2 months, lock that mom up to,” another commented.