Morristown Man Charged In Beating Death Of Boy In Custody: Police

MORRISTOWN, NJ — Edwin Urbina, who was charged Monday in the fatal beating of a 3-year-old boy in an East Hanover hotel over the weekend was arrested on Tuesday and faces several criminal charges, including first-degree murder, police said.

Urbina, 27, whose last known address was on Clyde Potts Drive in Morristown, was taken into custody outside of the Morris County Records and Administration building on Tuesday without incident police said. He is being held in the county correctional facility until his first court appearance.

Urbina is charged in the beating of his girlfriend’s 3-year-old son, who died Friday morning after police said that Urbina beat the boy earlier in the morning at the Oyo Hotel in East Hanover. Police said Monday that the boy’s mother, Krystal Straw, was not present when the beating took place but arrived at the hotel after the incident.

Police said Tuesday that Straw took Urbina to another location before she took her son to the Morristown Medical Center. Police said that Urbina instructed Straw to delete certain content from her phone and deny that he had any involvement in the boy’s death when questioned by police.

Straw has been charged in the incident and remains in jail pending her first court appearance, which is scheduled for Wednesday. In addition to the murder charges, Urbina faces criminal charges of second-degree endangering the welfare of a child, third-degree tampering with a witness and fourth-degree tampering with evidence.

The boy was taken to the hospital on Friday morning and police were called after receiving reports from the medical center that the boy had gone into cardiac arrest. The Morris County medical examiner declared the boy’s death a homicide following an autopsy.

The Morris County Prosecutor's office on Tuesday praised the exhaustive efforts of the East Hanover Police Department, the Morristown Police Department, the Morris County Sheriff’s Office, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Essex County Prosecutor’s Office, the Morris County Medical Examiner’s Office, and the Morris County Prosecutor’s Office in working together to investigate this incident leading to the arrests of the suspects.