Sep 23, 2008 6:29 am US/Eastern
2 Bronx Bat Attack Suspects In Custody
20-Year-Old Suspect Arrested Sunday Night
Vicious Beating Of Boston Radio Talk Show Host Caught On Video
NEW YORK (CBS) ―
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The man who viciously beat a 52-year-old father of three with a baseball bat outside of a Bronx apartment building will turn himself in to police on Monday afternoon, CBS 2 has learned.
CBS
The man accused of viciously beating a 52-year-old father of three with a baseball bat outside of a Bronx apartment building turned himself in to police on Monday afternoon, CBS 2 HD has learned.
CBS 2 HD's Pablo Guzman confirmed that the suspect, whose identity has not yet been released, surrendered with a lawyer at the 52nd Precinct shortly after 3 p.m. Monday.
Meanwhile, that suspect's alleged accomplice was arrested was Sunday night.
Police say the family of a 20-year-old Gavin Scott convinced him to surrender to authorities for his role in the attack that was caught on video surveillance and has subsequently enraged a community.
The victim, 52-year-old Boston Spanish-language radio show host Pelagio De La Cruz, was hospitalized after he was struck eight times by the suspects. He remains in stable condition at a local hospital, and spoke for the first time since the attack on Monday as his family stood around his bed praying.
Scott was asked by a photogapher about his role, but responded that he wasn't the one to strike De La Cruz with the bat. "I didn't hit him. They're searching for him. I'm not the one," he said.
Still, police aren't biting and are charging him with attempted murder and robbery charges.
According to police, the pair brutally beat De La Cruz, who was visiting his children in the Fordham section of the Bronx.
The graphic surveillance video released by police shows one attacker forcefully slamming the bat on the 52-year-old victim at least eight times after he fell to the ground outside his children's apartment building on Davidson Avenue. Police say the attackers were driving nearby when they saw De La Cruz walking at 3:30 in the morning and decided to rob him.
Police say the pair got away with a gold chain, his wallet and cell phone. Someone in the apartment building found the radio show host lying unconscious in the lobby 30 minutes later.
De La Cruz's three children have been keeping a vigil by his hospital bedside for the last week. He remains in critical condition and unable to speak. But his 15-year-old daughter Ruta had some emotional words after the attack:
"If you're going to rob somebody, how come you have to hit him until he dies, because he almost died. ... They just took a bat and they just hit him in the face, over and over again."
De La Cruz, who works in Boston as a Spanish talk-show radio host for WESX-AM, often comes to the city to visit his children, ages 22, 18, and 15.
"He doesn't have any problems with anybody. He always stays here with us and he goes to work and he comes here. We're always here, we're always together," said Ruta De La Cruz.
CBS 2's Pablo Guzman and Magee Hickey contributed to this report.
(© MMIX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
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