The brothers of the 3-year-old boy beaten and drowned to death in a Brooklyn bathtub were the ones who made the horrifying discovery, police said Thursday.
Kevin James, 29, was charged with murder, assault and acting in a manner injurious to a child in the Sunday death of little Denim Brown.
Denim’s 24-year-old mother left the boy and his two siblings with a 66-year-old neighbor at the building on New York Ave. near Snyder Ave. in East Flatbush so she could go out to dinner, NYPD Chief of Department Joseph Kenny said at a Thursday news briefing. The brothers’ ages were not immediately known.
The neighbor had been watching Denim on and off for over two years, Kenny added.
The man’s stepson, James, left with Denim and took him to a vacant apartment across the hall, according to the chief.
“[James] takes the child by the hand, they walk out and nobody realizes they walk out of the apartment,” Kenny said. “He brought the child to an abandoned apartment and that’s were the homicide takes place.”
Denim’s cause of death was determined to be drowning and blunt force trauma.
“[James] comes back to his apartment and the two other brothers realize, ‘Where’s the kid?’” Kenny said. “So the brothers do a search and they find him deceased.”
Medics rushed Denim to Kings County Hospital, but he couldn’t be saved.
James left the building but came back and cops put him under arrest, when Kenny said the suspect was “acting very incoherently.”
James has no recorded history of mental illness with the city. In 2010, he was arrested for petty larceny and possessing a knife over 4 inches, according to prosecutors.
Following an arraignment in Brooklyn Criminal Court, James was held without bail.
