ECSO: Child handcuffed, beaten with bat

ESCAMBIA COUNTY, Fla. (WALA) - According to the Escambia County Sheriff's Office, two Pensacola natives are behind bars for allegedly beating a little girl with a small wooden baseball bat.

Those suspects are 41-year-old Roscoe Daniels and 36-year-old Latanya Gee. 

Officials said the victim is the age of a middle school child.

According to authorities, deputies found her with visible injuries after performing a welfare check on the child Wednesday, November 14.

Before the little girl was beaten, deputies said the suspects restrained her using handcuffs and blindfolded her so she couldn’t see what was happening.

“The victim had ran away prior and had been returned home," said sheriff's office spokesman Matt Baxter.  "And according to the suspects, they were trying to punish her for that.”

The report indicates that Daniels and Gee took turns striking the girl on the arm with the bat. The victim told deputies Gee threw her into a wall and bit her as well.

The alleged abuse was discovered by deputies after the girl's classmates notified their school resource officer.

“The neat thing about this is that those two kids had such a relationship with the school resource officer that they felt comfortable going and reporting this. And that’s what we want. We want the children to feel safe reporting stuff to law enforcement so that we can intercept these kinds of things," Baxter said.

Officials said had the students not had that kind of relationships with the deputy, who knows how this could’ve turned out.

“Hopefully, now that we’ve stepped in, the child can be taken away from that situation and be placed in a good home and be taken care of," Baxter said.

That's a process the Department of Children and Families already has underway.

As for the suspects, they remain behind bars facing multiple charges including cruelty toward a child.