A Connecticut mother has been accused of physically and emotionally abusing her 10-month-old daughter, recording it, then sending the videos to the girl's father along with text messages in which she threatened to further harm to the child.
"I'll f--king break her face" and "[your daughter's] face is done" are two of the text messages police said 20-year-old Kellie Park sent to her ex-boyfriend, 23-year-old Erick Vece, on June 9.
"[The case] is substantial enough that it warrants a lot of concern," West Haven Police Department Sgt. Dave Tammarom told The Huffington Post.
The messages Vece received from Park -- roughly 50 in all -- were accompanied by eight video attachments, said police. In each video, the toddler was "berated, assaulted and tormented by Kellie Park," according to Tammarom.
Allegedly filmed inside Park's West Haven home, the chilling videos are detailed in her arrest affidavit. In the first video, Park allegedly yells at her daughter, "eat stuff off the floor. This is what your dad wants to make me do." In another she asks the toddler whether she is hungry, then "pours/throws food on her," police said.
The abuse continued with the toddler being filmed on the floor without a diaper. The affidavit says Park told the girl in the video, "Maybe you can wear a shitty diaper. I don't care. Play with cigarettes. Want some Tylenol? Play with that, too." The video then shows Park throwing an object, believed to be a bottle of Tylenol, at her daughter, police said.
The child can be heard screaming and crying in the videos. The affidavit says that in one of the clips, Park kicks a gate onto the toddler and says, "Don't you get it? Your father doesn't care, so, guess what? I'm not gonna care." In another, the affidavit says, Park shakes her and allegedly puts her foot on her daughter's chest when the child falls down.
Vece received text messages warning him that his daughter had a broken arm and daring him to call the police. "Call the cops. Do me the favor, fat pig," read one. Another said, "I love abusing this kid."
Vece showed the messages to his father who contacted police. Questioned by police, the affidavit says, Vece said that he dated Park for about two years and they had one child together -- the 10-month-old girl seen in the videos. Vece lived with Park and his daughter until March, when he was arrested for domestic violence.
A West Haven police report dated March 10 indicates that Park told investigators Vece had punched her in the side twice during an argument. Park was transported to the hospital, where doctors determined that she had a collapsed lung. As a result, Vece was charged with second-degree assault.
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According to Tammarom, officers investigating the child abuse case were unable to immediately arrest Park, who had been hospitalized earlier that day after she had threatened to kill herself.
In one of the videos that Park allegedly sent to Vece, a female can be seen holding a knife and making a cutting motion across the inside of her left wrist. There is no visible wound, but the individual in the video has a tattoo that matches Park's, police said. When officers went to the hospital to question Park, they were told she was under heavy sedation.
West Haven police transported Park's daughter to a local hospital for evaluation. The baby was then placed with the Department of Children and Families. Detectives questioned Park's mother, Mary Correia, and were told that Park is bipolar and suffers from a mood disorder and obsessive deviant disorder. Correia also said that her daughter is "confrontational and violent," according to the affidavit.
In addition to her 10-month-old daughter, Park also has a 2-year-old girl. Correia told police that she has been attempting to gain custody of the older child.
Park appears to have accounts on several social networking Web sites, including MySpace, Facebook and the photo sharing site Photobucket. The MySpace pages are set to private, but the Photobucket account is public and contains more than 150 images and videos, although some have been deleted by the host site for violating its terms of service. Most of the images appear to be of Park and her children.
One of two Facebook pages apparently belonging to Park states that she attended West Haven High School and is the mother of two "beautiful baby girls." The page was last logged into last year. The last post on the most recent Facebook page apparently belonging to Park was June 2, when a photo of two little girls sitting in a wagon -- presumably her daughters -- was posted.
A post from February reads, "When things go wrong I know I'll always have you, my baby girls." Another message from the same month reads, "Some people are animals and need to be in cages." There is also a Facebook page attributed to Vece, but the last public post was made about two years ago.
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Kellie Park
On June 20, Park was released from the hospital. Later that day, West Haven officers assigned to the U.S. Marshals Task Force took her into custody without incident.
She is accused of third-degree assault, cruelty to persons, risk of injury and threatening. She is being held on a $50,000 bond, and is scheduled to appear in Milford Superior Court July 11.
"A lot of information is yet to be determined. A lot of the circumstances of what's alleged needs to be determined. That's going to happen and I would expect and request people hold their hysteria and judgment until a better picture becomes clear," Park's public defender, Kenneth Bunker, told HuffPost.
Park's mother did not immediately respond to a request for comment. A Facebook page attributed to her contains several posts related to Park.
"The way I feel right now no one knows the pain I have right now," one post reads. "No mother should feel this way. My heart is broken in a million pieces and yet I keep moving and praying. Yes, I believe in god and yes there must be a plan ahead for me and my family. My daughter is sick and what she did is 100% wrong, but she has to pay the price."