Boy Charged in Baby’s Beating to Stay in Custody

He is so small that his feet didn’t quite reach the floor as he sat in court Friday, but the 6-year-old boy replied “yeah” when a Juvenile Court referee asked if he understood that he has been charged with attempting to murder a month-old baby.

It took just 10 minutes for Referee Stephen Easton to decide that the boy, who is also charged with burglary, will for now remain the youngest child held at Contra Costa County Juvenile Hall, where he is to undergo psychological testing.

Legal experts believe he is the youngest person ever charged in the United States with so serious a crime.

Describing the boy as “very angry,” prosecutor Harold Jewett said he had threatened tiny Ignacio Bermudez before allegedly entering the baby’s Richmond home Monday night, tipping him from his bassinet and attacking him. The incident, which lasted about two minutes, took place while the baby’s 18-year-old stepsister was in another room.

The 6-year-old “previously went to the home and previously expressed the belief that the family there had been harassing him--looked at him the wrong way--and he had to kill the baby,” Jewett told the court.

When police questioned him about the attack, the 6-year-old “lied about it . . . he beat this baby in the head with his feet, his fists and ultimately with a stick,” Jewett said. “This young man is very angry . . . he should not be released, period.”

The child and 8-year-old twin boys who also lived in the neighborhood had allegedly gone into the apartment to steal a Big Wheel tricycle.

The 8-year-olds, who are charged with burglary, will also return to Juvenile Hall but may soon be allowed to go home to their family.

Jewett said that after the three boys entered the Bermudez home, it was the 6-year-old who kicked and beat the infant before he and the twins made off with the tricycle belonging to one of Ignacio’s older brothers.

Earlier, police had said all three boys participated in the attack. Jewett said Friday, however, that he does not have “convincing” evidence that the twins joined in the beating.

In fact, attorneys for the twins argued that the brothers should never have been taken into custody.

“There is no evidence whatsoever that they were responsible for the underlying tragedy,” said Linda Fullerton, appointed by the court to represent one of the brothers. “They are young, young children that maybe took a bicycle.”

But the 6-year-old, Jewett said, is a different story.

“It is not, frankly, in the minor’s interest or the public interest to put this minor in a facility where he has any freedom of movement at all,” the prosecutor said. After the attack, he added, the boy threatened a female witness, telling her he would harm her if she went to the police.

On Friday, the baby remained in intensive care at Children’s Hospital in Oakland, where he is breathing with the help of a ventilator. Doctors say he sustained two skull fractures and internal bleeding in the attack, and is likely to suffer permanent brain damage.

Public Defender Leslie Bialik, representing the 6-year-old, said the boy needs to be in a “therapeutic environment,” but argued that Juvenile Hall is not equipped to handle such a young child. She also questioned his ability to understand the consequences of his actions.

“He’s just a little tiny munchkin, is what he is,” Bialik told reporters after the hearing. “I’m not sure what he understands at this point.”

Bialik said she and the family agree that the 6-year-old should be kept in a locked facility, but would prefer that he be in a smaller group home.

The boy’s family is “extremely concerned and distressed and praying every minute for this child in the hospital,” Bialik told reporters.

The 6-year-old’s mother, who works at a day care center, and his grandparents were at the hearing. Before it began, they pushed grim-faced through a phalanx of reporters, refusing to answer questions about the boy.

In the hearing room, the 6-year-old showed little emotion, but had trouble sitting still despite the brevity of the proceedings. Before being led away, he hugged his grandparents, but ignored his mother. His next appearance in court is scheduled for May 3.

If the referee finds the allegations against him to be true, he would become a ward of the court and could be placed in foster care or some other rehabilitative program.

Fullerton, attorney for one of the twins, indicated that the court decided to keep the brothers at Juvenile Hall for now mostly to protect them from the throngs of reporters in their neighborhood. “Their principal has described them as model children,” she said.

When she was introduced to her young client early Friday morning, she said, “The first question he asked me was, ‘How is the baby?’ ”

The decision to file the charges against children so young “is a sad commentary on a society when we deal with the problems . . . with criminal prosecution,” she said.

The twins, she said, mainly are being raised by an aunt and grandparents because their mother has cancer. The mother, grandparents, aunt and other relatives were in the hearing room Friday.

“This is a large, extended family, so I would assume they will go home soon,” Fullerton said.

Both the prosecutor and defense attorneys said this case is breaking new legal ground in California because the law until now has assumed that children so young do not know the difference between right and wrong.

But because the crime was so violent and the little boy had allegedly expressed his earlier intent, Jewett said, he felt compelled to test the law by bringing charges.

“The question we considered is: Is there a duty for us to assign social, legal responsibility for what happened in this case?” he said.

Times staff writer Richard C. Paddock in San Francisco contributed to this story.