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Deadly, Horrific Abuse: Baby Lived a Short, Pain-Filled Life

The baby police say was brutally beaten by a Glens Falls man, has died.

We are now learning more about the alleged killer's abusive past. Sources tell us the baby boy died Wednesday night at Albany Medical Center. He had been clinging to life there after police say he was beaten by his mother's roommate, 23-year-old Michael Flint, Jr.

Flint was in court Wednesday night to answer to the abuse charges. According to the statement he gave to police, the abuse started Monday, and continued into Tuesday night. In those statements, Flint admits he punched, slapped, and even bit the 7-month-old baby. And that's not all.

"I then stuck both my hands around his neck and I started squeezing," Warren County District Attorney Kate Hogan told the judge, reading from Flint's statement to police. She continued, "I squeezed his neck for about 20 or 30 seconds, it was enough to knock him out - I think he was still breathing."

And as NEWS10's Jeff Stoecker explains, this is not the first time Flint has been charged with abuse.

Minutes - feeling more like hours on Bay Street in Glens Falls. Loved ones have been waiting for word on baby Colbi. At 6pm, they got the call he was taken off life-support. Billie Joe Wright is Colbi's babysitter.

"What the baby do (that was) so wrong?" Wright says. "He's 7-months-old - what's a 7-month-old baby going to do besides cry?"

In his statement to police, Flint says the crying may be the reason for the biting, punching, and choking. Wright does not think this was the first time.

"I noticed the bruises a couple of months ago, it started with a black eye," says Wright.

Kathy Cloutier says the signs of abusive behavior were already there.

"It started here, and God forbid, look where it ended up today," Cloutier says.

Cloutier heads-up the SPCA of Upstate New York, and for the past four months has been caring for "Brownie" - a dog Flint brutally beat. NEWS10's Anya Tucker confronted Flint back in July:

• Anya: "I'm looking for Michael Flint, are you him?" (standing at his residence)
  
  
• Flint: "No, no."

It was him. And Cloutier says Flint's history of animal abuse fits a profile she has come to know all too well.

"It starts out children with animal abuse, go to child abuse, they go to spousal abuse, and it's a pattern that's set-up," says Cloutier. "And unfortunately, it starts with the little guys that can't defend themselves - they cant tell anyone else what's going on."

Family and friends are left wondering why someone did not speak up sooner, because Colbi could not. Now, Michael Flint will be charged with cutting that life short.

"I think he should rot...to my opinion, he should rot," Wright says.

Flint is due back in court Thursday morning.