A Virginia man is in custody after authorities allege he admitted to choking his 1-year-old son to death last month for “not listening” to him, according to a criminal complaint.
Inmate documents reviewed by PEOPLE show Nathaniel Lee Edmonds remains in custody at the Rappahannock-Shenandoah-Warren Regional Jail and is being held without bond after he was arrested on Sept. 18 in connection with his son’s death that same night.
He is charged with second-degree murder. It’s not immediately clear if he has entered a plea or retained an attorney.
Police were called to Edmonds’ home in Front Royal, Va., last month when the boy’s mother came home from work and found the boy unresponsive in his bed, according to a criminal complaint filed in court this week and obtained by PEOPLE. Edmonds “was supposed to be watching” his son, the mother told police, but he was “nowhere to be found” when she got back and found the boy, the complaint alleges.
The Front Royal Police Department said in a statement last month that Edmonds’ son was taken to Warren Memorial Hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
Police later discovered Edmonds walking down a street roughly seven miles from the family’s home, according to the complaint. The complaint alleged that Edmonds was detained “and confessed to choking his 1-year-old, using both of his hands for minutes, because the child was not listening and he couldn’t take it anymore.”
The father allegedly told police he choked his son to death in his own bed, where the mother later discovered her son’s body, according to the complaint.
PEOPLE reached out to the Warren County Commonwealth’s Attorney’s Office for comment but did not immediately receive a response Tuesday morning.
