Barber Who Tortured 6 Year Old Faces Murder Charge, DA Says

ORANGE COUNTY, CA — A 41-year-old man was charged Wednesday with torturing and killing a 6-year-old boy in Placentia.

Ernest Lamar Love was charged with murder, assault on a child with force likely to produce great bodily injury resulting in death and torture, all felonies. He is also facing a sentencing enhancement for causing great bodily injury that left the victim comatose, court records show.

Love is accused of killing 6-year-old Chance Crawford, the Orange County District Attorney's Office said.

The boy's mother, who was working a night shift as a nurse's assistant at St. Joseph's Hospital, dropped her son off with Love at 6:30 p.m. Thursday at his barbershop to babysit him, prosecutors said.

Love is accused of beating the boy to death with a piece of lumber when the child wet his pants while at a park, prosecutors said. Love brought the boy to the emergency room at Children's Hospital of Orange County about 1:30 a.m. Friday, and the victim died Tuesday afternoon, prosecutors said.

The defendant allegedly beat the boy with the block of wood and poured hydrogen peroxide on his open wounds before making the boy do push-ups and other exercises, prosecutors alleged.

According to doctors at CHOC, much of Chance's flesh was missing from his buttocks. He also had extreme brain swelling and other injuries consistent with violent shaking, as well as a healing fracture on his shoulder blade.

"While his new classmates were celebrating the end of the first week of first grade, Chance's seat in his classroom was empty as he fought for his life in a hospital bed," OCDA Todd Spitzer said in a statement. "Words do not exist to describe the absolute terror this little boy was forced to endure."