A man dangled a child off a two-story hotel balcony to “scare him,” then dropped the boy headfirst, Florida authorities said.
The child sustained blunt force trauma, and now 31-year-old Brandon Gilmore is charged with aggravated child abuse, according to the Daytona Beach Police Department.
His attorney information is not available in Volusia County court records.
Gilmore met the child’s mother at the hotel pool only about five hours before Saturday’s incident, police wrote in an arrest affidavit.
Gilmore and the mom discussed getting piercings together, and he was invited to her hotel room, he told police, according to the affidavit.
He said he would take the boy onto the balcony to play and “scare him a little bit,” police said.
Surveillance footage from about 7:30 p.m. shows him carrying the child in his arms as he left the hotel room. Then on the balcony, he switched to holding the child by one leg while dangling him over the edge, according to police.
Witnesses said they heard the child scream before the man dropped him, according to investigators.
The boy, who police said was under the age of 5, was taken to a hospital as a trauma alert because of the “seriousness” of his fall, investigators said. Police did not disclose the boy’s current condition.
Daytona Beach is on Florida’s Atlantic coast, roughly a 55-mile drive northeast from Orlando.
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