A McComb man pleaded guilty Monday morning to 27 counts of felony child abuse for recording himself beating his ex-girlfriend’s disabled 5-year-old daughter.
Circuit Judge David Strong sentenced Alex Mead, 23, 1052 Eastover Lane, to 180 years.
Pike County Chief Investigator Greg Martin said investigators in charge of the case learned when they arrived at work Monday that Mead wanted to plead guilty.
“They received a call that requested them to come down to the courthouse,” he said.
Mead then stood before Strong, where he received his sentence.
Investigators arrested Mead in February after the child’s mother turned over the footage of Mead beating her daughter to the Brookhaven Police Department.
The child’s mother discovered the videos on Mead’s smartphone after he was “acting strangely” and immediately reported the abuse.
The child’s mother, who is not being identified in order to protect her daughter’s identity, told the Enterprise-Journal shortly after Mead’s arrest that her daughter has a rare brain disease called holoprosencephaly. The child is in a wheelchair and requires a breathing tube, she said.
Video footage shows Mead beating the girl, and one video shows Mead pulling her hair and striking her with his fist.
Brookhaven police turned the information over to the Pike County Sheriff’s Department.
The victim’s mother reportedly told investigators she noticed bruising on her daughter’s nose.
“It’s a terrible situation. He abused a special needs child that wasn’t able to defend herself,” District Attorney Dee Bates said this morning.
Mead’s trial was set to begin next week. Bates said he’d been in talks with Mead and his lawyers about the possibility of Mead pleading guilty.
“We did notify the Pike County Sheriff’s Department that there was a possibility that he was going to plead guilty, but people say that and then change their minds but he did enter a guilty plea yesterday,” Bates said.
Deputy Robert Roberts stated in court documents that “in the various videos Alex W. Mead is abusing (name withheld) by shaking her violently.”
Roberts also said Mead was seen in videos “striking her in the face open palm, striking her in the head with closed fist, biting her on the right ear, throwing her onto the bed and wall and placing his foot onto her face.”
The incidents took place at least seven different times.
The child’s mother had said the video clips were 30 to 45 seconds long and may have been recorded when Mead was alone with her daughter.
She said she had Mead watch her daughter when her babysitter had to run errands. She notified her brother, sister and child’s father when she found out about the incident and they took Mead to the Brookhaven Police Department.
She said that when she confronted Mead, he seemed “out of it.”
“He said he didn’t know why he did it,” she said in February.
