A demented Washington, DC, man allegedly beat his girlfriend’s infant to death in a jealous fit of rage and tried pinning the horrific slaying on his 6-year-old autistic and nonverbal son, prosecutors allege.
Demetrius Beatty, 40, was charged Tuesday with killing the 2-month-old girl — weeks after the fatal beating that cops say he previously warned the child’s mother he would carry out if she left her babies alone with him.
The disturbing slaughter occurred on Aug. 16 at Beatty’s New Jersey Avenue home, where cops arrived to find him holding the severely injured and unresponsive baby in his arms, according to an arrest affidavit.
Beatty tried laying the groundwork to frame his little boy before police even arrived, claiming his “autistic son” attacked baby Khamyah Honesty in a bungling 911 call — in which he gave them the incorrect apartment unit and the wrong age for his son, police said.
“I guess my autistic son got to the 2-month-year-old daughter and was fighting her and he damaged her pretty good. Her face is swollen, her nose is bleeding. I need help quick,” Beatty said, according to the documents.
“I stepped out in the hallway for a second with the other kids and he was in there by himself. Him and her. And he attacked her.”
The admitted drug-using stepfather — who was watching baby Khamyah, her twin sister, and three other children — allegedly told an officer he was outside the apartment when he heard a thumping. When he returned, he claimed he found the baby “on the f–king floor face down,” with his son clapping and smiling next to her, officials said.
“I know my son, he gets into something,” Beatty said, according to the documents, later saying: “He beat that girl ass.”
He also told cops his autistic son showed “negative behavior toward his siblings” because he thought his father loved them more, often hit himself and that the boy was “out of this world strong.”
When the officer asked the child’s name, Beatty incorrectly said her name was “Maya” and revealed he did not know her birthdate because she wasn’t his biological child — though asserted that he was the “baby’s protector and the protector of the home,” the records state.
Little Khamyah Honesty suffered multiple fractures, a “flattened” nose bridge and other head trauma, which contributed to her death just hours later.
But the injuries were so severe that they couldn’t have been inflicted by a child, a forensic pathologist ruled.
Prosecutors allege Beatty beat the baby because he was jealous that the mother of his two children had become pregnant with the twin girls through an affair, telling cops he was not “happy” and “bitter.” He said that the pair were no longer in a relationship, but they were co-parenting her five children, according to authorities.
The mother was at the grocery store at the time of the brutal murder, and revealed to cops that Beatty had warned her just days earlier that he would kill her twins if she left them alone with him to visit their father, who is incarcerated.
“If you leave them b–ches here, them b–ches are going to be dead,” Beatty allegedly told her, according to her interview with cops.
“Mighty funny that you made that comment and I come back from the grocery store and my daughter dead,” she continued — though she apparently also denied that Beatty could have been responsible for her baby’s death.
Unfortunately, it was not the first time little Khamyah Honesty had suffered a catastrophic injury.
Just weeks before her murder, the baby had fallen roughly 75 feet down an escalator after slipping from a car seat in an incident her mother allegedly tried to downplay, police said.
Beatty also allegedly locked the twins in a closet because they were crying and smelled bad.
The four surviving children showed signs of neglect and inexplicable injuries, investigators say. They have since been removed by social services.
Cops said the family was living in deplorable and filthy conditions, and that pills and marijuana were left out in the open.
Beatty also admitted to using fentanyl days before the murder.
Tragically, a relative of the twins’ father had been trying for two months to have the city’s Child and Family Services Agency check on the kids out of concern for their safety, the court documents said.
Beatty has been charged with first-degree felony murder and first-degree cruelty to children.
He was ordered to be held without bond and is due back in federal court Sept. 28.
