Something Bad Happening to a Little Kid v5.0 (Turlock CA)

URLOCK, Calif. (AP) - Police killed a 27-year-old man as he kicked, punched and stomped a toddler to death despite other people's attempts to stop him on a dark, country road, authorities said.

Investigators on Sunday were trying to establish the relationship between the suspect and the child they say he killed Saturday night. The Stanislaus County coroner said the boy appeared to be between 1 and 2 years old based on his size, according to county sheriff's deputy Royjindar Singh....

As they got closer, the couple saw the man brutally beating the toddler behind his truck and throwing the child on the ground, according to Singh. Two or three other cars stopped, an unusual number to be passing through the remote area surrounded by a dairy, a cow pasture, a cornfield and a farmhouse, he said.

"What we got from witnesses is he was punching, slapping, kicking, stomping, shaking," Singh said. "They tried to intervene and get involved, but their efforts really didn't have an effect. The suspect was engaged in what he was doing. He just pushed them off and went back to it."

A sheriff's helicopter responding to emergency calls from the area landed in a cow pasture at 10:19 p.m. carrying a Modesto police officer who shot the man to death after he refused an order to stop beating the child, Singh said.

Singh said the coroner does not plan to confirm the identities of the suspect and victim until Monday. Because his injuries were so severe, the child will have to be identified through a blood or DNA test, he said.

"In the shadows and light it looked like he had hit an animal," said Dan Robinson, the chief of Crows Landing Volunteer Fire Department, who came upon the chaos driving home from a late dinner in Turlock, in an interview with the Modesto Bee. "As we backed up again, I could see that he had blood on his arms. I could see that it was a small child."

Robinson jumped from his vehicle and confronted the man, who lunged at him. Robinson said the man wasn't screaming and wasn't loud, but was forceful, saying "demons" were in the boy.  "Give me the knife. Give me the knife," the man said as he grabbed for a pen in the firefighter's front pocket.

"There was a total hollowness in his eyes," Robinson said, "like I could see right through to the back of his head."

Does anyone here carry anything in the car that could've been used as an effective weapon against this dude?

Ayup, several things actually.

Not to sound redneck or anything, but I almost always have some sort of garden tool, short piece of lumber or a hunk of chain or ratchet strap floating around in the bed of my truck.

A sheriff's helicopter responding to emergency calls from the area landed in a cow pasture at 10:19 p.m. carrying a Modesto police officer who shot the man to death after he refused an order to stop beating the child, Singh said.

I was actually thinking in terms of .38 snubby, but I suppose a tire iron would do quite nicely.