This is why we keep our doors locked and alarms armed even in the middle of the day while we are home. It is a shame, but it is necessary.
Police have arrested a suspect in the attack on a young mother — captured by a nanny cam — who was beaten in front of her 3-year-old daughter at their home in an upscale New Jersey community.
Shawn Custis, 42, was arrested in upper Manhattan by New York and New Jersey FBI agents Friday afternoon, shortly after he was publicly identified as a suspect, a law enforcement official said.
Custis, who has a long criminal history of burglaries, was located in the lobby of a building on 10th Avenue in Inwood, where his girlfriend lives, the official said.
He said nothing to reporters as FBI agents led him to the Essex County courthouse to be arraigned.
Authorities say the woman and her daughter were watching cartoons on their couch in Millburn, N.J. last Friday morning, a baby boy asleep upstairs, when the suspect — alleged to be Custis — kicked in the dead-bolted door of their Cypress Street home.
The suspect beat the mother as the little girl watched, punching and kicking the woman at least 16 times before pushing her down the basement stairs, police said.
The assault was captured on a nanny cam. Footage from that camera shows the woman being tossed around and beaten as her daughter (seen as a blur in the video) looks on. The mother stays nearly silent during the end of the attack.
