A 2-year-old boy remains in critical condition after being attacked by his mother’s boyfriend. The Anchorage man arrested Tuesday in connection with the assault appeared in court today.
Alexie Kapotak Jr., 21, faces multiple felony charges, which include three counts of first-degree assault and two counts of second-degree assault after the early-morning incident. He also faces one count of fourth-degree assault.
Family and friends of the mother, Sherina Nelson, and her son, known as “Baby D,” were there for Kapotak’s arraignment at the Anchorage Jail court.
The little boy’s father, Daniel Demientieff, Sr., says he still thinks he’s in shock.
“It’s just really hard,” Denientieff said in tears after the arraignment. “It’s not even right that someone lifted him up by his legs and was slamming my kid.”
Charging documents detail a scene of domestic violence between a woman, her son and her boyfriend, before police finally arrived.
At about 2 a.m., tenants in a Spenard apartment complex reported a physical disturbance to the building manager, who then called the Anchorage Police Department. When officers responded to the apartment complex, located near the intersection of Minnesota Drive and W. 41st Avenue., they encountered “a female stumbling out of an apartment, with the door being slammed behind her as if she had been pushed out of the apartment,” charging documents say.
The female has been identified as Angela Grice, one of the women Kapotak is accused of assaulting, according to the court documents. Grice’s face was bleeding due to multiple bite marks.
She screamed to the officers, “He’s killing her,” the documents say.
Grice told police that another female and a baby were inside the apartment. Charging documents detail that screaming could be heard from inside the residence. When officers forced their way through the door, they found Nelson — the other female Kapotak is accused of assaulting — “sitting on a bedroom floor, crying hysterically, and holding an infant,” the documents say. Nelson was also bleeding from her face.
The infant she was holding was covered in blood, charging documents say. Blood was also found on a wall and in other areas of the bedroom.
Officers found Kapotak in the bathroom, the documents say, his t-shirt covered in blood. When police tried to remove him from the tub, the 21-year-old refused to get up, then punched an officer in the chest and groin. After a brief struggle, multiple officers were finally able to apprehend Kapotak, who police say smelled of alcohol.
Nelson, the woman police found in the bedroom, told police that the baby was her son. She says Kapotak was her boyfriend but not the child’s father. Nelson recounted the night’s events to police, informing them that the three of them had gone to dinner earlier for Kapotak’s birthday, the documents say. When they returned to the apartment, Kapotak left the residence again to go out to a few bars.
When Kapotak came back, he “appeared intoxicated and accused Nelson of having men over at the residence,” the documents say. At some point, Nelson told police, Kapotak grabbed the 2-year-old by the back of his neck and began to smash his face into the ground multiple times, stopping to punch Nelson in the face and strangle her almost to the point where she couldn’t breathe, the charging documents say.
As Kapotak alternated between attacking both the mother and her son, Grice — the child’s aunt — showed up to the residence. Grice was then attacked by Kapotak, the documents say. He hit her several times in the face and then bit her face, “removing a chunk of flesh from the area above her right eyebrow.” He then dragged her out of the apartment.
Nelson, her son and Grice were all transported to a hospital, where the two women were treated for the injuries they sustained in the altercation. The young child suffered multiple skull fractures, a fracture to his eye socket and a clavicle fracture, among other injuries. He was placed on a breathing tube and remains in critical condition, family members confirm.
According to the documents, when Kapotak was interviewed a second time, he remembered the physical altercation at the apartment. In his first police interview, he said that after his trips to multiple bars, he didn’t remember anything until he was put in the back of the police car.
In the second police interview, Kapotak says he tried to kiss Nelson when he returned to the residence, but she rejected him. He added that he remembered “rolling around” with Nelson in a bedroom and that, during the struggle, the 2-year-old came between them.
In a final interview with police — after additional time allowed for blood testing and other tests – Kapotak admitted to police that he did punch the little boy “three or four times in the head and stomach,” adding that he had simply lost control.
“I pray that he gets as much time as he can,” Denientieff said of Kapotak. “As much time as they can give him. He deserves to be in jail for life.”
