Dante Daniels was brutally beaten with a hammer on Sept. 1. The 8-year-old California boy was protecting his younger sister from being sexually assaulted by his mother’s ex-boyfriend, Deandre Chaney Jr., who then unleashed the fatal beating, according to reports.
Chaney Jr. beat Daniels, “Down to his spine,” according to the boy’s grandmother. He died six days later. According to a criminal complaint, 23-year-old Chaney Jr. was performing a criminal lewd act on Dante’s 7-year-old sister when the child intervened.
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“This guy beat my grandson with a hammer. Down to his spine. They couldn’t save his brain,” Dante’s grandmother Monique Brown told KTXL. Chaney was found in Nevada on Sept. 2. Officers said he was wrapped in a tarp hiding in a backyard shed, according to the Sacramento Bee. He was arrested on an outstanding warrant. Chaney is the ex-boyfriend of Dante’s mother, 28-year-old Elizabeth Salone. At some point, investigators say the suspect turned the hammer and knife on Salone and the 7-year-old girl. source
Salone sustained an eye injury during the altercation and will “probably never see out of her left eye,” Brown said.
Brown added that the 7-year-old girl “will need a lot of help.”
In October, Chaney plead no contest to a charge of failing to register as a sex offender. In 2014, he pleaded no contest to battery charges. He also pleaded no contest to assault charges in 2011.