Man Charged following Beating Death Of 3-Year-Old Jeida Torres In Brooklyn Glenn Schuck reports playpause 
 
 Neighbor Keith Best told the New York Daily News and New York Post that the boy had big bruises on his face and arms. “You gotta send the police.” 
 
 Moments later Kimberly Torres, Smith’s wife and the children’s mother, also called 911 in a panic, the source said. Did we have this abuser among us and it was ignored?” he said. “He was not rough with them or aggressive, nothing,” she said. The suspect then tried to slit his wrists at his aunt’s Queens home in a failed suicide bid as his stepdaughter died of her injuries at Wyckoff Hospital, the police source said. “That’s why it’s called an accident.” 
 
 Anthony Cook, 33, who lives two blocks away and has a 5-year-old daughter, said he was shocked and upset about the girl’s death. “She’s a baby.” 
 
 The 5-year-old boy, Andrew, may have sought to intervene on behalf of his sister before being struck himself, officials said. A spokeswoman for the Department for Homeless Services said in a statement that it was working with the police “to determine how this occurred.” 
 
 Mark Almodovar, a plumber who said he was Mr. Smith’s uncle, said that his nephew regularly watched the children and that he had grown fond of them, adding that he may have been trying to discipline the young girl, but had gone overboard. “A person doesn’t start taking the life of a child overnight, it is something that is built up to. She got lungs collapsed — one of her lungs collapsed,” Almodovar said. “Sometimes kids don’t listen to their parents and they need to be disciplined. But the way he disciplined them was very wrong.” 
 
 Smith, who is being treated at Elmhurst Hospital for his self-inflicted slash wounds, was charged with assault and endangering a child, police said. Brooklyn Borough President Calls For DHS Probe Into Toddler's Death Roger Stern reports playpause 
 
 As the criminal investigation continues, Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams has called for the Department of Homeless Services to launch its own probe into what happened. “If it is determined that this young child and her brother had old injuries, physical injuries then it means as though we are creating safe havens for abusers,” Adams said.
– A New York City man accused of killing his 3-year-old stepdaughter for soiling her pants was arrested after his own horrified mother turned him in, sources say. Kelsey Smith is believed to have flown into a rage and savagely beaten Jeida Torres on Saturday, police sources tell the New York Daily News. He allegedly called 911 posing as a neighbor before fleeing the family's apartment in a Brooklyn homeless shelter. Cops found the dying toddler and her badly beaten 5-year-old brother, who police believe may have tried to intervene when Smith attacked his sister. Police say Smith, 20, routinely watched his new wife's two children when she was at work and there had been no previous domestic violence calls to the apartment. The 5-year-old boy is still in the hospital, as is Smith, who relatives say tried to slit his wrists in a suicide attempt before police caught up with him, reports the New York Times. He has been charged with felony assault and acting in a manner injurious to a child less than 17 years old; murder charges may follow. Neighbors say they heard loud arguments at the apartment in recent weeks, and Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams has promised a thorough investigation, reports CBS 2. "A person doesn't start taking the life of a child overnight, it is something that is built up to," he says. "Did we have this abuser among us and it was ignored?" (In Mexico earlier this year, police and soldiers managed to rescue hundreds of abused kids from "truly terrible conditions" in a refuge.)