Chance Crawford was a happy 6-year-old who loved Sesame Street and Mickey Mouse Clubhouse. The first-grader’s drawings of the Disney mascot were so detailed that his family swore they looked like they were straight out of a movie.
Chance died Tuesday, days after prosecutors alleged her caretaker tortured and brutally beat her with a piece of wood.
“Why did this happen to him? He didn’t get to live out the rest of his life,” said Chance’s father, Vance Crawford. he told KABC television. “He had a happy life. He was great. He was a great kid. I love my son. I miss him so much. He didn’t deserve this.”
The man who authorities say was caring for the boy, Ernest Lamar Love, 41, was charged this week with murder, torture and child abuse resulting in death. He has pleaded not guilty and is being held without bail.
On the evening of Aug. 29, after his third day of first grade, prosecutors say Chance was dropped off at Love’s Placentia barbershop while his mother went to work an overnight shift as a nursing assistant at St. Joseph Hospital.
Authorities say Love drove Chance to a local park where the boy was urinating. Surveillance cameras later showed Chance following Love, who was carrying a large piece of rough wood into the barbershop, prosecutors said.
Once inside, prosecutors allege, Love beat the boy with a stick and poured hydrogen peroxide on the wounds. He then forced the injured boy to roll over, sit up and jump, according to prosecutors.
“There are no words to describe the absolute horror this little boy had to endure, all at the hands of someone who should have been protecting him, not torturing him to death,” Orange County Detective Attorney Todd Spitzer said in a statement.
Love’s attorney could not immediately be reached for comment Thursday.
Early Friday morning, prosecutors said, Love took the boy to the emergency room at Orange County Children’s Hospital. At 1:30 a.m., Muhabbat is said to have taken the boy, who was unconscious and not breathing, to the hospital.
Prosecutors said doctors discovered missing flesh and “raw, lacerated wounds” on the boy’s leg, along with severe brain swelling and other injuries associated with a severe concussion.
Four days after entering the hospital, Chance died.
in a GoFundMe In a campaign to help cover the son’s funeral expenses, family members wrote that Chance was “always happy, always kind and always friendly.”
“Chance lit up every room he walked into,” his family wrote. “He was smart, curious, and a great artist. He was a talented child and had so much life.”
If convicted, Love faces a maximum sentence of 32 years to life in prison.
