Indianapolis man admits fatally beating girlfriend's 3-year-old daughter, faces 75-year sentence
9/23/2013INDIANAPOLIS — An Indianapolis man faces 75 years in prison after pleading guilty to fatally beating his former girlfriend’s 3-year-old girl for soiling herself.
Twenty-two-year-old Jose Cruz entered the plea today in an Indianapolis courtroom. He’s due to be sentenced Oct. 16.
Police say they found Carmen Ellis covered with bruises and not breathing inside her mother’s apartment on Indianapolis’s far east side in August 2012. Court records say her final words to Cruz had been: “Papa, I hate you.”
The Indianapolis Star reports Cruz admitted to a judge that he committed the fatal beating and earlier beatings of the girl.
The girl’s mother, Samantha Ellis, awaits trial on a charge of neglect for leaving her daughter with Cruz despite allegedly knowing he had harmed the child.