Mother ‘beat son, 5, to death over broken TV’

A MOTHER in New York has been accused of beating her five-year-old son to death because he broke the television while playing a video game.

Kim Crawford, aged 21, was charged with murder and manslaughter in Bronx Criminal Court.

Prosecutors said she admitted hitting the boy hard in the back and stomach over the broken TV.

Police found her son, Jamar Johnson, unconscious and not breathing at their home.

An autopsy revealed internal abdominal injuries.

Defence lawyer Camille Abate said Crawford should not have been charged with murder because the facts did not establish that she tried to kill her child.

The mother said she beat her son to death because he broke the television while playing a Nintendo Wii.

Crawford smacked Jamar in his back and stomach on June 13 “harder than I’ve ever hit him”, she told police.

Crawford watched him vomit and complain of agonising pain for five days as his internal injuries got worse. She never took him to the hospital because she feared getting arrested, she told investigators.

“I was worried they’d see the bruises and I’d get in trouble,” she told police.

Jamar died of an infection to his lacerated pancreas and intestine at Montefiore Medical Center last Friday.

Prosecutors charged Crawford with murder and manslaughter. She was ordered held without bond yesterday.

“I can’t believe this,” Jamar’s father said outside court.

The single mother told police different stories about how Jamar was injured before finally admitting the truth, prosecutors said.

After hours of questioning, she admitted becoming enraged at Jamar when he told her he broke the television, prosecutors said.

“I hit Jamar twice in the back and twice in the stomach,” she told police.

On Friday night Crawford “held Jamar’s hand and it was cold,” she told police. “He wasn’t moving.”