Parents caught in disturbing tug-of-war fight with baby
Two feuding parents were caught playing tug-of-war with their baby — and the pair are now behind bars after the shocking footage spread online.
Cops collared Britnie Hass and Elias Holt after the pair were caught tussling over their 11-month-old son in the parking lot of a Utah motel last week, a local Fox affiliate reports.
The cellphone video shows the baby boy hanging loosely on Hass’s side as she fights off Holt outside a La Quinta in Orem, and the tot is then tossed around as a third family member tries to intervene.
“When I was saying to him, ‘Let me take the baby inside’, that’s when she grabs the baby out of his arms so violently,” Melina Ylinen, the third woman and Holt’s aunt, told Fox 13.
“The baby was really low on her hip, and he was bowing backwards, and I was afraid his back was going to snap.”
“She has the baby in one arm and she starts punching my nephew, and at the point the baby is falling out of her arms. She has him in a headlock and his head is the only thing keeping him from falling on the ground.”
Hass also turned on Yllinen as she tried to rescue the baby.
“I was hit seven or eight times and she tried to get her fingers in my eye sockets to pull my eyes out,” she told ABC4 Utah.
Police eventually arrived and took the family to a relative’s house. They later arrested Hass for child abuse, and Holt over a previous warrant.
They say the footage will help them make their case.
“We are going to use the video as evidence in our case as to why we filed the appropriate charges,” Orem Police Lt. Craig Martinez told ABC4.
Cops say the baby wasn’t injured in the fight, and is now staying with another family member.