(DailyVantage.com) – Remember when the world stood watching in shock as Michael Jackson dangled his 9-month-old son over a balcony in Paris? A Florida man is now charged with aggravated child abuse, a felony, for pulling a similar stunt.
Only this time the four-year-old boy fell from Brandon Gilmore’s hands and plunged from the second-story balcony at a resort hotel.
A witness said Gilmore appeared to be playing with the boy and swinging him before “he let him go” after holding the boy by one foot. Then, said Dasanni Bentley, the child slipped from his grasp and fell head-first onto the concrete below. Bentley said the child’s face turned purple and it was clear he was “getting no oxygen.”
People ran to the boy from the pool and surrounded him, trying to figure out how best to help him without touching the boy and possibly injuring him further. At the same time, Bentley said, Gilmore and the boy’s mother ran down to the patio. The mother picked up her child and took him side the hotel, he said.
Paramedics took the child to Halifax Medical Center; doctors said he had sustained blunt force trauma to his head. Thankfully, the boy has already been released and doctors say he will likely be fine without lingering medical problems, according to Daytona Beach police officer Sgt. Tim Ehrenkaufer.
Police say they have video footage from before the incident depicting Gilmore holding the boy in a normal way before taking him on to the balcony of a room at the Sandals Inn. Reports indicate the man told the child’s mother that he wanted to frighten the child “a little bit.”
The same witness who saw the incident told media that Gilmore had just met the boy’s mother a few hours earlier the same day. The identity of the mother and child have not been publicly released.
Police charged Gilmore with aggravated child abuse; he’s locked up without bail at the Volusia County Jail at the time of this writing.
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