Man Held in Death of Child and Beatings of Two Others

Three young children were brutally beaten--and one of them died--during what police describe as a “night of torture” last week at an apartment in Inglewood.

Their mother’s boyfriend, Lamar King, 26, was being held Monday at the Los Angeles County Jail on charges of murder and injuring children. Police said no charges have been filed against the mother, who on the night of the attack was at a hospital being treated for an illness.

Downstairs neighbors in the apartment building in the 3600 block of West 102nd Street said they heard banging and thumping above them for almost two hours on the night of March 22, but paid little attention because such sounds were common, according to published reports.

Police said Estella Navarrette Martinez called them after she was released from the hospital the next morning.

“When I walked in that bedroom . . . it was terrible,” Inglewood Police Sgt. William Thompson said Monday. “That someone that young could be put through something like that, it was incredible.”

Thompson said the severely bruised body of Martiniano Hernandez, 2, was found in his bed.

“He had been struck in the face and the head with shoes, and perhaps with a broomstick,” the sergeant said. “He was dead.”

Police said the boy’s 4-year-old brother and 1-year-old sister were covered with bruises. “The 4-year-old looked worse than the dead child,” Thompson said.

The surviving children were taken to Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center, where they were treated for their injuries before being placed in foster homes.

“It appears that many of their injuries had been inflicted some time ago,” Thompson said. “ . . . He’d been putting these kids through some pretty significant torture.”