CHARLESTON, W.Va. — The mother of a two-year-old boy called her son’s attacker “a monster” in Kanawha County Circuit Court Wednesday before a judge sentenced the man to prison time.
“You’re sick. You’re sick in the head and you don’t deserve to see daylight again,” Tiffany Taylor told Aaron Hudgins, 35, of Charleston who bit and beat her then 15-month-old baby in April 2015.
The attack happened at an apartment in the 6500 block of Roosevelt Avenue in Charleston where Taylor, Hudgins and a few others were getting high on drugs like heroin and methamphetamine.
Taylor admitted she was wrong for leaving her son Mitch with Hudgins for about 45 minutes. She said that’s when he viciously ripped apart her son’s face and other body parts.
“I trusted you with my son!” she yelled to him. “My son loved you and you hurt my baby!”
The boy’s grandmother Christine Taylor told the court she thought a dog attacked her grandson.
“I cried for this baby thinking the dog, the animal did this to him and the more and more I looked down at my grandson, the more I looked at him, I could tell it wasn’t a dog. I could see four points from a molar bite,” she said.
Kanawha County Circuit Judge Charles King sentenced Hudgins to 2-10 years in prison for child abuse and 1-15 years for possession of a controlled substance with the intent to deliver.
Before the Taylors spoke, Hudgens apologized to the court.
“I’m very remorseful and sorry for what I’ve done to anybody I’ve hurt, offended my family, the courts, the state of West Virginia, particularly the child,” Hudgins said.
The child’s mother, speaking to reporters afterward, said there’s no way Hudgins is sorry.
“Remorseful for what? You couldn’t even turn around and look me or my mother in the eye,” she said. “You’re remorseful because you’re off the streets and you’re not able to get high? You’re not able to hurt anybody else? I hope that he’s miserable in there.”
“He’s worthless,” she continued. “Death wouldn’t be good enough for me.”
Images of the baby’s face were shown to the court as the family sobbed. It was a “heinous attack,” according to Kanawha County Assistant Prosecutor Maryclaire Akers.
“There’s just no other way to say it. This defendant belongs in prison. He belongs there on a consecutive term. He belongs there for as long as the law will allow,” she told the judge.
Taylor and a few others face drug charges.
Hudgins is being held at the South Central Regional Jail.