Sent to us by Mark Worsham.
New York Daily News – by Sasha Goldstein
A California man was arrested after he dragged, pulled and punched a toddler boy inside a Bakersfield market – an assault all caught on camera.
Justin Whittington, 23, was arrested and charged with child endangerment after the startling footage from inside the Vest Market appeared online, police said.
A total of about one minute of surveillance footage captures Whittington terrorizing the helpless child.
“That was horrible, man,” store owner Harry Dindral told the Daily News. “The worst thing I’ve ever seen.”
In one clip, Whittington finds the boy hiding behind an aisle and grabs him by the leg before lifting the child several feet off the ground by the shirt and apparently yelling in his face. The child eventually runs off to a woman who appears to be his mother – and who appears to be pregnant.
A second, even more repugnant clip, catches Whittington chase down the child before surprising him around a corner and throwing a hard punch directly in the boy’s face.
The child crumples to the ground crying and holding his head as Whittington leans over and again appears to yell, then drags him to his feet by his arm.
The boy, still crying and holding his face, runs over to the woman, who leads him out of the store by the arm as he continues to bawl.
Dindral, the store owner, said Whittington had come into the store previously, so he knew who he was. Dindral was in the back of the store when his employee ran to the back and urged him to watch the surveillance video to witness the horrifying assault.
The clip later made it online and into the hands of the cops, who tracked down and arrested Whittington around 2 a.m. Friday morning.
Dindral said Whittington is the boy’s father.
“It was the right thing to do,” Dindral told the Daily News. “You don’t hit a child like that.”
Whittington is held in lieu of $1 million bail and is due in court Monday afternoon.
Medical personnel examined the child at his home but he did not need to be hospitalized, police said.
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