Richard Anthony McTear Jr., 21, was arrested Tuesday, hours after a confrontation at his former girlfriend's apartment in which he snatched the infant, Emanuel Wesley Murray, the Hillsborough County sheriff's office said.
The child's body was found about 4 .am. Tuesday on the side of Interstate 275 in Tampa, Florida, by a local television photographer on his way to work. The photographer, WTVT's Jason Bird, said he stopped when he spotted something by the roadside
A preliminary autopsy determined the child died of blunt trauma to the head, the county medical examiner's office said.
Police were called to the apartment of McTear's former girlfriend about 3:15 a.m. Tuesday. The mother, Jasmine Bedwell, 17, told investigators that McTear had hit her several times and threatened "to kill the both of y'all," the sheriff's department said in a statement announcing the charges.
McTear threw a car seat containing the child across the room during the fight, causing the boy to fall onto the apartment's concrete floor, investigators said. He then picked up the boy and drove off in his blue Chevrolet Impala, throwing the child out while on the interstate, the sheriff's department said.
