SUNNY ISLES BEACH, Fla. – A man visiting Sunny Isles Beach with his family is facing two felony charges after police said he was caught on surveillance video at his apartment building severely abusing his 2-year-old daughter because she was “being fussy.”
Police said the incident happened Tuesday evening at the La Perla Condos at 16699 Collins Ave.
The reports state that a front desk clerk had been tipped off to the abuse and called police.
Authorities said they viewed multiple clips from the building’s CCTV system showing Andrei Sevastianov, 37, beating and at one point appearing to choke his daughter.
“What he did was beyond unacceptable,” Sgt. Brian Schnell, a Sunny Isles Beach police spokesperson, said during a Wednesday morning news conference.
The first video was from the building’s pool area, where police said the abuse began.
“(Sevastianov) takes a towel, picks up the victim and wraps it around her neck area and appears to tighten the towel,” an arrest report states. “The victim is seen flailing her arms around as he is squeezing. He then lets go and faces the victim towards him. As he does this, he grabs the victim by the hair and slams her head on his shoulder. (Sevastianov) then begins to walk inside of the lobby, carrying the victim.”
The abuse continued inside, police said. They described what surveillance cameras in the building showed.
“As he was walking in the door, he drops the victim from chest height and knees her on the way down as she hits the floor,” the report states. “(Sevastianov) then kicks her on the right side of her head. (He) then yanks the victim up from the floor by her hair. The two make their way to the elevator.”
Police said the girl was then seen in surveillance video falling to the floor after the two got into the elevator. They said Sevastianov then picked up the girl and “violently (shook) her, causing her head to uncontrollably snap back and forth several times.”
They described what the video showed next.
“While still waiting for the elevator, he tightly wraps a towel around the victim’s body and throws her over his shoulder as the victim dangles, kicking her legs,” police said. “The defendant then backs into the wall slamming her into it, pinning her between the wall and his back. The defendant than whips her around to the front, letting her fall to the floor.”
Schnell described the actions as “things that you don’t expect to see happen to a child, especially at the hands of someone they trust most in the world, their father.”
Authorities said they went to Sevastianov’s unit and as they tried to arrest the Russian national, he “attempted to pull away” and “forcefully elbowed” an officer in the chest.
Once in custody and in questioning, Sevastianov said through an interpreter that his daughter “was not listening to him and being fussy, refusing to obey him,” the report states.
“I showed him the recording of the incident and he stated that he wrapped the towel around her because it was windy,” an officer wrote in the report. “He stated that when she fell to the ground, ‘She wanted to be put down, so I put her down.’”
Police said Sevastianov claimed he “did not lose his temper” and that his daughter was “just being difficult.”
They said he did admit to “realiz(ing) how it looks from a third-party view,” calling what happened a “mistake” and something that “won’t happen again.”
Medics took the girl, accompanied by her mother, to Joe DiMaggio Children’s Hospital in Hollywood for evaluation and treatment, police said.
Officers arrested Sevastianov on one count of aggravated child abuse causing great bodily harm or torture and five counts of child abuse causing no great bodily harm, along with a count of resisting an officer with violence.
“I don’t know how much it’s going to cost me because I’m here just as a tourist,” he said through a Russian interpreter in Miami-Dade bond court Wednesday.
As of Wednesday morning, he was being held in the Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center without bond.
Editor’s note: Sevastianov‘s arrest report lists his place of residence as Sunny Isles Beach. He later testified in court that he is a tourist visiting South Florida. The article has been updated to reflect that.