Dad accused in 6-year-old son's beating death

HOUSTON Lucy Adams is feeling the pain a mother should never feel. She's living a day she never thought she'd see.

"I hadn't seen my baby since I dropped him off," Adams said. "I hadn't seen him since the beginning of the summer."

Police told her that her 6-and-a-half-year-old son, Teakarrous Jackson, was beaten to death at the hands of his father.

"There was severe trauma, bruising from the head and chest area " Sgt. Brian Harris with HPD homicide said. "That certainly wasn't caused by any accident."

According to police, Alex Duncan confessed to repeatedly punching his son in the chest when the boy wouldn't go to sleep.

"He then would strike him and do what he called 'chest boxing' and boxes the child in the chest with his fists," Harris said.

Adams, the child's mother, says she's never seen her ex act violent or abusive. Police say because the motel-style apartment is one open room, Duncan's girlfriend, Tammyra Sampson, and her 9-year-old daughter watched the beating until the boy's body went limp. Only then did Sampson rush for help.

"I felt for his pulse; the pulse on the baby and there was no pulse," said neighbor Lisa Cranshaw. "And I felt the top of the body and it was real cold."

At first, Duncan and Sampson told neighbors Jackson had a seizure. But when police came back with a different story, that accused Duncan of brutality.

It twisted stomachs around the complex.

"These are little innocent people that did not ask to come into this world," neighbor George Turner said.

As 30-year-old Adams digs for the strength to see tomorrow. She is haunted by the last time she heard Jackson's voice over the telephone.

"He said, 'Mommy I love you,' and I said, 'I love you too,'" Adams said.

And she's tormented when she thinks of the pain her child suffered until he could be at peace.

"I would take his place," Adams said. "I would take his place so he can live. I would take his place."

Duncan is charged with murder. His girlfriend, Sampson, is charged with injury to a child by omission, which basically means she witnessed the abuse of a child, but failed to stop it.

Duncan is only charged with murder since his son was six-and-a-half years old. Capital murder only applies to victims whose ages are six and under.