Brooklyn Man Charged For Fatally Beating 4-Month-Old Whose Crying Interrupted His Video Games
A Brooklyn man who was arrested last month in connection with the death of an infant is facing multiple charges. Ricardo Price, 23, was arrested and charged in the fatal beating of four-month-old Royalty Kemp, his girlfriend’s daughter, after her crying interrupted Price’s video games.
Newborn Royalty died July 1 and her death was recently ruled a homicide caused by abusive head trauma, according to the New York Daily News. Price, who is not the child’s father, is charged with attempted murder, three counts of assault, reckless assault on a child and acting in a manner injurious to a child
According to Royalty’s mother, Erica Kemp, of South Brunswick, N.J., the incident occured on June 21 while Price was baby-sitting the newborn in his Brooklyn apartment. Kemp, 24, met Price on a dating website last November.
“He took an innocent child’s life for absolutely no reason. The only reason he gave [police] was that she wouldn’t stop crying. ... He also asked me for forgiveness. I told him, ‘I don’t know how to do that, honestly,’” Kemp said.
The police told Kemp that Price threw the crying child against a wall and banged a video game controller against the infant’s head. According to police, Price initially told them that Royalty was lying on his lap and he bounced up and down her once she started crying, admitting that he accidentally used too much force.
The mother of three told the Daily News that Price had baby-sat the newborn twice before without incident before June 21, when she left Royalty with Price to go pay a fine and pick up her 6-year-old son’s kindergarten certificate.
Kemp told the Daily News that after checking on the newborn early the next morning, she tried to wake Royalty at 10:30 a.m., alarmed that the child hadn’t woken up yet.
“I really tried to wake her. I poured water on her face, running it over her head, you know? Just doing anything you can do to try to wake a person up,” Kemp said.
Kemp and Price then rushed the baby to the local hospital. After being transferred to Bellevue Hospital in Manhattan, doctors diagnosed Royalty with a brain injury, a fractured skull and internal bleeding.
The next day, police interrogated Price, and he allegedly admitted what happened and was taken into custody. Price, who works as a security guard, is currently jailed at the New York City Department of Corrections facility at Rikers Island without bail, waiting on word about any upgraded charges after Royalty’s death.
“I hope he gets sentenced for life, or electrocuted. When people hear what he did, he’s not going to have a very nice time in [jail],” Kemp said.
