Charlyn Saffore had no reason to suspect something would go wrong when she asked Ernest Lamar Love, a “trusted friend” she met at church, to babysit her 6-year-old son, Chance Crawford.
It was only after she received a call from Love that he was rushing Chance to a hospital that she realized she was living her worst nightmare.
Love, a 41-year-old barber from Placentia, California, allegedly became so enraged with her son when he peed his pants while at a park that he tortured and murdered the boy, beating him to death with a “large piece of raw lumber.”
Love has been charged with one felony count of murder, one felony count of torture, and one felony count of child abuse causing death, according to the Orange County District Attorney’s Office. He has pleaded not guilty and is being held without bond.
“I was genuinely blindsided. I trusted him with my son,” Saffore said through tears on ABC7 Eyewitness News. “He died a brutal death. It was brutal. He did not deserve to go out that way.”
The disastrous incident began when she dropped Chance off at Love’s Placentia barbershop around 6:30 p.m. on Aug. 29. The young boy had just finished his third day of first grade, and Saffore was heading to her overnight shift as a nurse’s assistant at St. Joseph’s Hospital.
Love and Saffore met while he was a minister at Amazing Church in Lake Elsinore, where he went by the name Azariah and often lent a helping hand to those in need.
“He did the right things. He helped people move. He helped give advice. He helped people start businesses,” Jason Welsh, lead pastor at Amazing Church, told the outlet, visibly shaken. Love reportedly also worked in the church’s child ministry at one point but was suspended from his various roles due to inappropriate behavior with women.
“We poured so much into him. He failed us. He failed us,” repeated Welsh as tears rolled down his cheeks.
Love also extended “help” to Chance, who he had babysat before.
“He came in my son’s life just as a male figure,” Saffore told Eyewitness News. “He taught him things. He helped him overcome certain fears that my son had.”
Surveillance video from Aug. 29 shows Love walking into his barbershop holding a large piece of lumber with a “reluctant Chance following behind him,” read a press release from the Orange County District Attorney’s Office.
The pair resurfaced again around 1:30 a.m. on Aug. 30 when Love carried Chance’s beaten body into the ER of Children’s Hospital Orange County. The boy was unconscious and struggling to breathe. He slipped into a coma and later succumbed to his injuries on Sept. 4, after he was declared brain dead and taken off life support.
“Doctors at CHOC discovered that much of Chance’s flesh was missing from his buttocks, leaving raw, gaping wounds,” read the press release. “Love is accused of beating the first grader with the piece of lumber, then pouring hydrogen peroxide on the open wounds before forcing the boy to doing push-ups, sit-ups, and jumping jacks,” it stated.
CHOC doctors noted injuries that pointed to “violent shaking” and a healing fracture on his shoulder blade, raising concerns that he was hurt before.
When Love informed Saffore they were going to the hospital, he said Chance fell and hit his head while working out. “That’s what’s hard for me because I believed him when he told me,” said the grieving mom to ABC7.
Orange County District Attorney Todd Spitzer vows to seek justice. “Words do not exist to describe the absolute terror this little boy was forced to endure – all at the hands of someone who was supposed to be protecting him, not torturing him to death. Now we as prosecutors will do everything we can to pursue justice for little Chance and be his protectors in death that he failed to have in life,” he stated.
Chance was Saffore’s only child and is described as “intelligent, lively, sharp, witty” in a GoFundMe that was set up to help with his funeral expenses.” If you knew him, you would have loved him like his entire community did,” it reads. The family has received just over $23,000 thus far.
Love faces a maximum sentence of 32 years to life plus five years if convicted on all charges.
