A mom opened a home camera app on her phone while she was away from the house and saw her boyfriend repeatedly punching her son and beating him with a mop, officials say, according to Florida news outlets.
Shawn Stone, 32, was charged with aggravated child abuse on May 9, according to Volusia County court records.
The woman had left her home in DeLand to take her daughter to a doctor’s appointment when a “bad feeling overcame her,” The Daytona Beach News-Journal reported. Deputies with the Volusia County Sheriff’s Office said she opened an app that allowed her to see a video stream from inside her home and saw Stone “standing over the child repeatedly punching him in the head as he lay in a fetal position,” the outlet reported.
When the boy got up from the bed he was lying in, Stone kicked him, then grabbed a mop and started to beat him with it, Fox 35 reported, citing an arrest affidavit. Then, the woman’s camera app “suddenly stopped working.”
The son, who is 5, had a fractured skull and multiple other injuries, including a cut lip and bruises on his face, eyes and head and a bruise shaped like a mop handle on his thigh, the outlet reported.
Officials said that Stone went into a “fit of rage” because the boy had wet the bed, according to WESH.
When the boy’s mother came home to confront Stone, he fled the house on an ATV, the outlet reported.
The Volusia County Sheriff’s Office did not immediately respond to a request for information from McClatchy News.
Stone is being held in Volusia County jail without bond, according to jail records.
DeLand is about 40 miles north of Orlando.