A 40-year-old Washington, DC, man has been charged with murder after prosecutors say he beat his girlfriend’s 2-month-old daughter to death and then attempted to blame the killing on his 6-year-old autistic, nonverbal son.
Demetrius Beatty was charged Tuesday in the death of Khamyah Honesty, weeks after the Aug. 16 beating at his New Jersey Avenue home. According to an arrest affidavit, police arrived to find Beatty holding the severely injured, unresponsive infant.
Before officers arrived, Beatty had already begun pointing to his son as the culprit during a 911 call in which he gave the wrong apartment unit and the wrong age for the boy, according to police.
“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 court documents. “I stepped out in the hallway for a second with the other kids and he was in there by herself. Him and her. And he attacked her.”
Beatty, who admitted to using drugs, was watching Khamyah, her twin sister and three other children at the time. He told an officer he had stepped outside the apartment when he heard a thumping sound, and returned to find the baby “on the f–king floor face down,” with his son clapping and smiling beside her, officials said.
“I know my son, he gets into something,” Beatty said, according to the documents. “He beat that girl ass.”
He further told investigators his son showed “negative behavior toward his siblings” out of a belief that his father favored them, that the boy often hit himself, and that he was “out of this world strong.” When an officer asked for the infant’s name, Beatty incorrectly said “Maya” and admitted he did not know her birthdate, since she was not his biological child — though he claimed to be the “baby’s protector and the protector of the home,” records state.
Khamyah suffered multiple fractures, a “flattened” nose bridge and other head trauma, and died hours later. A forensic pathologist determined the injuries were too severe to have been caused by a child.
Alleged motive tied to jealousy
Prosecutors say Beatty was motivated by jealousy over the fact that the twins’ mother had become pregnant with the girls through an affair. Beatty told police he was not “happy” and was “bitter” about it. The couple was no longer in a relationship but was co-parenting the mother’s five children, according to authorities.
The mother was at a grocery store when the killing occurred. She told investigators Beatty had warned her days earlier that he would kill the twins if she left them alone with him while she visited 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 account to police.
She told police: “Mighty funny that you made that comment and I come back from the grocery store and my daughter dead” — though she reportedly also denied Beatty could have been responsible for the death.
A pattern of prior harm
Khamyah had suffered a serious injury before her death — a roughly 75-foot fall down an escalator after slipping from a car seat, an incident her mother allegedly tried to downplay, police said. Beatty is also accused of locking the twins in a closet because they were crying and smelled bad.
Investigators found the four surviving children showed signs of neglect and unexplained injuries; all have since been removed by social services. Police described the family’s living conditions as deplorable and filthy, with pills and marijuana left out in the open. Beatty admitted to using fentanyl days before the killing.
Court documents note that a relative of the twins’ father had spent two months trying to get the city’s Child and Family Services Agency to check on the children’s welfare.
Beatty has been charged with first-degree felony murder and first-degree cruelty to children. He is being held without bond and is due back in federal court Sept. 28.
