51黑料

Mason Lee Williams, 24, repeatedly beat a 5-year-old boy and nearly suffocated a 2-year-old girl, authorities said.

A camera mounted in a bedroom captured the abuse over a two-week period, starting in about mid-April, Detective Lance Pippin of the Jefferson County Sheriff鈥檚 Office said in court papers.

Williams lives in the 1500 block of Irish Sea, northeast of High Ridge.

The boy鈥檚 mother, who is Williams鈥� girlfriend, reported the abuse to police. Williams is not the father of the boy, but he is the father of the girl, said Grant Bissell, a sheriff鈥檚 spokesman.

Neither child was hospitalized after the abuse, police said.

The cameras showing the abuse were essentially baby monitors, and Williams was aware they were there, Bissell said.

Prosecutors on Wednesday charged Williams with 12 counts of child abuse. Each child abuse count is a felony punishable by up to seven years in prison. Williams also was charged with animal abuse, a misdemeanor.

The abuse detailed in court documents includes putting a cloth over the mouth of the girl to nearly strangle her; hitting the boy in the neck, head, buttocks and legs and throwing him on a bunk bed.

On May 2, police said, Williams led the boy, sobbing, to a room. Williams grabbed the boy鈥檚 leg, suspended him upside down and walked him near the bedroom window, threatening to throw him out the window.

After being suspended off the ground for several minutes, he put him down, continuing to swear at the boy and call him names.

Two days later, Williams was upset over curtains being touched, and he hit the boy in the back of the head twice, police said. He showed the boy surveillance video from his phone and hit the boy in the face with the phone, authorities said.

On April 16, the girl was crying in her bed and Williams burst into the room and yelled at her to 鈥渂e quiet鈥� and 鈥渟hut the ... up,鈥� police said. He grabbed a blanket and put it over her face with enough force to push her into the mattress. The girl was seen struggling, and once Williams let go, her chest was rising and falling as if she was out of air, police said.

The family has a 2-month-old dog. The puppy wouldn鈥檛 follow Williams鈥� commands, police said, so he grabbed the dog as it ran by him one day in April. The puppy yelped, and Williams held it down by its neck, charges said. He then dragged the dog to the back door, out of camera range, and the pup is heard yelping several more times. Someone in the house later told police that Williams threw the dog into a kitchen table.

Detectives told a judge that Williams is a flight risk because he might be planning to leave the country at the end of June. Williams learned about the police investigation, officers said, during a child-custody proceeding.

Associate Circuit Judge Tony Manasala ordered that Williams be held without bond.

Williams was not in custody early Thursday, and he did not have an attorney listed in court records.