MANDEL: 'I will never hear my son call me Daddy,' weeps father of beaten boy
· Toronto Sun
Their little boy Quintanni was brutally beaten by his babysitter in the bathroom of a Toronto Children’s Aid office.
And then Shardanae Cousins-Emily, 22, left the blood-soaked bathroom stall, hid his horrific injuries by covering his face with his hood, declined assistance from a security guard and took the subway home where she simply waited for him to die.
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Yverson “Quintanni” Belotte Jr. was just three years old.
In the downtown courthouse where Cousins-Emily was convicted of second-degree murder earlier this year, the child killer sat lumpen in the prisoner’s box, not a shadow of emotion crossing her dull face, as Quinn’s mother and father poured out their sorrow and even Superior Court Justice Kelly Byrne was fighting back tears.
A friend held up a large portrait of Quinn as his heartbroken father passionately addressed the heartless woman who stole his son.
“You can never break us the way you broke my son’s face, jaw, and everything,” Yverson Belotte told her. “You will never break us the way you broke my son in that washroom for over an hour and 15 minutes. You’re never going to break me.”
Struggle to comprehend a world without Quinn
Yverson Belotte told the judge it was a struggle to find the words to express his heartbreak without anger and to comprehend a world where Quinn is no longer in it.
“I never got to experience him walking into his first day of school,” he cried, the lapels of his jacket adorned with photo pins of his beloved boy. “I will never hear my son calling me daddy.”
Quinn was supposed to ask him millions of questions until his hair turned grey.
“You didn’t just take my son’s life, Shardanae. You took an entire lifetime of memories that my son and I were supposed to create together,” Belotte said.
He then turned to the judge. “You would have loved him, Your Honour,” Belotte said with a smile. Quinn would have fed her his favourite chicken. “That was what my son did best. He shared love.”
The father’s voice then rose in agony.
“Please understand, I had to bury my son with no eyes and no brain. No eyes and no brain. Think about that for a second,” he cried.
Belotte has spent endless years trying to erase the image of his beaten little boy in the morgue.
“How can someone inflict such cruelty on an innocent child?” he demanded.
How indeed?
Cousins-Emily, now 24, grew up in foster care with Quinn’s mom Shania John and had agreed to babysit that weekend for her good friend. On Dec. 2, 2023, she took Quinn with her for a supervised CAS visit with her own son.
After handing her child back to his father, the Crown’s theory was that she then took out her frustration and pain at losing custody on the three-year-old in her care.
Toddler found dead the next day
He was found dead the next day in a Dawes Rd. apartment. Quinn had two teeth ripped from his gums, bleeding in his brain and dozens of injuries all over his small body, including defensive wounds, and 40 blows to his head and neck alone.
Now his mother must endure not only the pain of her baby’s death but being unfairly labelled a bad mother because she entrusted Quinn to her foster sister.
“Imagine losing your child and then having strangers tell you that you are the reason he’s dead,” John told the court. “I never imagined the person I trusted so deeply would be the person connected to the greatest loss of my life. She killed my son.”
Second-degree murder carries an automatic life sentence – it’s up to the judge to determine when Cousins-Emily can apply for parole. Her lawyers Jacob Stilman and Roger Rowe urged Byrne to set eligibility at 15 years, saying she was intoxicated and suffered from mental health challenges and anti-Black racism.
Crown attorney Carime Boehr urged the judge to impose 18 years of parole ineligibility. She acknowledged “her very tough life” but said that doesn’t excuse the savage murder of a vulnerable child or her complete lack of remorse.
“I ask Your Honour to imagine his terror, confusion and pain as this was happening,” Boehr said.
It is so hard not to.
Quinn’s father told his child’s killer that his victim impact statement had to be edited.
“I can’t call you a monster,” Belotte said.
He can’t – but we can.
The judge will deliver her sentence Oct. 23.