Man Arrested for Punching a Baby Claims He Thought it Was a Doll
New parents tend to be paranoid, and taking a new baby out of the house for the first time can be terrifying. I remember the first time I left the house, and suddenly the whole town seemed like it was full of speeding cars and unleashed dogs. Even in my intense new-mom paranoia, however, it never occurred to me that a person would run up to me in a grocery store and punch my newborn baby in the face, but that seriously happened this week in a Manchester supermarket.
According to The Independent, Amy Duckers was at a Tesco supermarket with her partner, her 7-year-old daughter, and her 5-day-old baby, Elsie Rose. It was the first time Elsie Rose had been taken out of the house since she was born. They apparently had run into some people they knew, because someone said, “Come over and have a look at this beautiful baby.”
At that point a 63-year-old man walked over and punched the six-pound, five-day old baby right in the face.
”We all heard the punch land on my little baby,” Duckers said, ”He ran over and punched Elsie Rose in the face leaving a very big fist mark shape across her forehead.”
The seven-year-old started screaming and sobbing in terror, thinking this man had just killed the baby. Luckily he had not, though the baby was rushed to the hospital and not released until 4 a.m. the next day.
The man was arrested for assault, and police say that he says he didn’t actually mean to punch a baby in the face. In his defense, he says he thought it was a doll.
But … I mean … who punches a doll? Is this a thing people do? If you see an acquaintance of a friend walking around with a doll in public, you run up and punch it in the face? WTF, man?
Punching a random stranger’s doll would be significantly less fucked up than what this man actually did, but seriously, how is, “Oops, I thought it was a doll!” this man’s defense?
Fortunately, police say the baby does not appear to have been seriously injured by the incident, and she was released from the hospital after observation. God only knows what kind of nightmares that 7-year-old is having, though. The baby won’t remember this when she grows up, but her 7-year-old sister certainly will.
