Peter Hendy Charged In Murder Of Kamari Zavon Taylor, Girlfriend's 4-Year-Old Son

A Washington, D.C., man stands accused of beating his girlfriend's 4-year-old son, then leaving him alone to die while going out to sell marijuana.

Peter Hendy, 33, is facing first-degree murder charges in the death of
Kamari Zavon Taylor, who was pronounced dead at Children’s National Medical Center on Monday afternoon after being found unconscious in his home. (Read the charging document here and the affidavit in support of an arrest warrant here; they're PDFs.)

ABC affiliate WJLA reports that Hendy punched Taylor a number of times in the abdomen after an argument about the boy riding his scooter too far from the home that the suspect shares with Taylor and his mother. According to NBC Washington, the beating "lacerated Taylor's liver, separating it into three segments," and would prove fatal.

According to the affidavit in support of an arrest warrant, Hendy told police Taylor then left to ride his bike for another 45 minutes, before returning home bruised, shaking and sweating. However, a medical examiner determined that the boy wouldn't have been able to ride for that long with the liver damage he had sustained.

According to charging documents obtained by NBC Washington, when Taylor said he wasn't feeling well, Hendy put the child to bed and went out for an hour to sell marijuana. When he came back, the station reports, Taylor was unresponsive.

An autopsy determined that Taylor died of blunt force trauma.

Taylor was reportedly well when his mother left for work that morning. Hendy is said to have called several times during the day to say that he was "disciplining" Taylor, and told police Taylor was behaving like a "smart mouth kid," according to NBC Washington.

Metropolitan Police Department spokesperson Anthony Clay told The Huffington Post that the suspect is not the boy's father.

"Kamari's a sweet little boy," the boy's grandmother, Azalea Taylor, told WJLA at D.C. Superior Court on Wednesday. "He's a lovable, sweet little boy."

Homicide Watch D.C. -- a website that tracks every murder in the nation's capital -- notes that Taylor is the second 4-year-old to be killed in in Washington in 2013.

In February, Samauri Jenkins died in a house fire that police determined had been set intentionally by Jerome Calvary Lewis. Lewis was charged with second degree murder.