Special to the Record
A Chelsea man was held without bail after being arraigned last week in Suffolk Superior court on a dozen indictments related to separate violent assaults of two young children, Suffolk District Attorney Kevin Hayden announced.
Kener Bautista-Zepeda, 19, was charged with one count of assault and battery, two counts of assault and battery with a dangerous weapon on a child under 14, three counts of assault and battery on a child with substantial injury, four counts of reckless endangerment of a child, and two counts of strangulation or suffocation.
Judge Catherine Ham ordered Bautista-Zepeda held without bail pending a dangerousness hearing on May 28. A grand jury indicted Bautista-Zepeda earlier last week.
Assistant District Attorney Allyson Portney said that on March 12, 2025, Chelsea police officers spoke with the mother of a child victim who said that the evening prior, her boyfriend, Bautista-Zepeda, had pushed her and punched her. During the assault their two-year-old child began to cry. Bautista-Zepeda used a cigarette lighter to burn the child on his upper back. The lighter left a burn mark about the size of a nickel, Portney said.
Portney said that on April 5, 2026, Revere police responded to Boston Medical Center to investigate a physical assault on a second child. Officers spoke with the mother of the three-year-old, who said that Bautista-Zepeda regularly cared for her child. She said that several weeks earlier she had noticed burn marks on her child’s arm that appeared to have been caused by a heated fork. She installed a camera in her child’s bedroom. On April 3 at approximately 11:00 a.m., the camera recorded Bautista-Zepeda violently assaulting the child.
“The recording captures the child walking toward Bautista-Zepeda with his arms outstretched as if to be picked up. Bautista-Zepeda then lifts the child with both hands above his own head and forcefully throws the child down onto the bed. The child immediately begins to cry in pain. Bautista-Zepeda then strikes the child in the abdomen with a closed fist three times. Bautista-Zepeda then climbs over the child and places both hands over the child’s mouth and nose, bearing his weight down onto the child through his arms and holding the child down by the neck. The child is seen on the video struggling to breathe for approximately nineteen seconds as Bautista-Zepeda held his hands over the child’s mouth and nose,” Portney said.
When the child’s mother confronted Bautista-Zepeda he fled the state and turned off his cell phone, Portney said.
On May 12 of this year, Bautista-Zepeda was located and apprehended in Virginia.
Revere police detectives traveled to Loudon County, Virginia on May 21 to take custody of Bautista-Zepeda and bring him back to Massachusetts.
“The Revere Police Department is committed to holding people accountable who commit crimes in our city,” said Revere Police Chief Maria LaVita. “Our detective division worked closely with many agencies throughout the investigation.”
The police chief said the investigation showed the commitment of the members of the Revere Police Department.