LAS VEGAS (KTNV) — A man is facing multiple charges in connection with a domestic incident in which a child was thrown from an apartment balcony over the weekend.
The Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department reports Jarick Willis was taken into custody after he reportedly threw his girlfriend's daughter to the ground from a third-story balcony on Sunday.
The incident happened at the Boulder Pines apartment complex on Boulder Highway near Desert Inn Road around 4:45 p.m.
Arriving officers located the body of a 5-year-old girl on the ground at the apartment complex who was unconscious. She was quickly transported to Sunrise Hospital, according to police.
Witnesses and the girl's mother informed police that Willis was the person who had thrown the girl off the balcony.
And according to the arrest report, Willis had been telling the mother, Angela Matthews, that he thought her daughter was "full of bad spirits" and believed she was a "demon."
That evening, Matthews told police that Willis had gone into the living room to get clothes after taking a shower when she then heard her son screaming in the living room saying Willis had just thrown her child off the balcony.
Matthews says she then saw Willis leaning over the balcony while spotting her daughter's body on the ground.
The mother told police that she was in fear for her life after this and her other children's lives so she armed herself and ended up shooting Willis in the apartment's bathroom during a confrontation.
Authorities say Willis suffered critical injuries and was transported to the University Medical Center that night.
The child survived the fall but suffered a fractured forearm, pelvis, leg, rib along with a collapsed lung and a possible fractured sternum, according to the LVMPD.
Willis is facing charges of child abuse and/or neglect, attempted murder and domestic battery.
