Hartsfield tells detectives as soon as he hit the girl, she threw up macaroni and mashed bananas and then crawled away in tears to lie down but appeared fine, waking up at one point when his mother came home and waving at her.
But a few hours later when he went to change her diaper he found her cold and not breathing.
A medical examiner would determine the girl died of blunt force trauma. Her liver was ruptured by the blows.
Hartsfield tells detectives he has some anger issues but that he had never struck his daughter before.
"It wasn't four times, eight times, I didn't put her in a headlock, it was two times. I said 'Go lay down' and she crawled away.'"
And there this one across the fold:
For a two-year period starting in January 2011 the man raped his stepdaughter, who was between 10 and 12 years old at the time, the criminal reports said.
The man, whose name is being withheld to protect the identity of the girl, appeared in Central Judicial Processing court in Jersey City yesterday afternoon via videolink from Hudson County jail in Kearny.
The man was surprised when he was told bail had been set at $250,000 prior to his hearing by Hudson County Superior Court Judge Paul DePascale.
“Is it really $250,000?” the man asked the CJP judge incredulously. When the judge said yes, the man uttered, “Oh s , so I gotta sit in here? I didn’t even do anything.”