Investigators on Sunday were trying to establish the relationship between the suspect and the child they say he killed Saturday night. The Stanislaus County coroner said the boy appeared to be between 1 and 2 years old based on his size, according to county sheriff's deputy Royjindar Singh.
"It's been a long night of wondering, 'Why?' — not only for the officers and the passers-by who stopped and tried to help out, but for anyone. Why would somebody do this?" Singh said.
Singh said the coroner does not plan to confirm the identities of the suspect and victim until Monday. Because his injuries were so severe, the child will have to be identified through a blood or DNA test, he said.
The suspect had a child's car seat in the back of his four-door pickup truck. The truck caught the attention of an elderly couple at 10:13 p.m. Saturday because it was stopped in the two-lane road facing the wrong direction, Singh said.
As they got closer, the couple saw the man brutally beating the toddler behind his truck and throwing the child on the ground, according to Singh. Two or three other cars stopped, an unusual number to be passing through the remote area surrounded by a dairy, a cow pasture, a cornfield and a farmhouse, he said.
"What we got from witnesses is he was punching, slapping, kicking, stomping, shaking," Singh said. "They tried to intervene and get involved, but their efforts really didn't have an effect. The suspect was engaged in what he was doing. He just pushed them off and went back to it."
A sheriff's helicopter responding to emergency calls from the area landed in a cow pasture at 10:19 p.m. carrying a Modesto police officer who shot the man to death after he refused an order to stop beating the child, Singh said.
Paramedics tried to resuscitate the toddler, who was not breathing when they arrived. The boy was taken to a local hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
No children within the dead boy's age range have been reported kidnapped or missing in Stanislaus County, Singh said.
The incident happened on Bradbury Road about 10 miles west of Turlock, a city located about halfway between Sacramento and Fresno.
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This was posted on another forum that I frequent. the original poster stated
This is beyond disturbing. I wish the man wouldn't have been shot to death. He deserves to be tortured to death. I can't understand why the passerby's could not stop this from happening, especially if there were a number of them. Granted, the elderly couple may have not been in the position, but surely a group of people could have done 'something'.
I'm pretty sure that if one of those people had been me, and I was carrying, I would have utilized my firearm (in an attempt to prevent the loss of one life). But I'm asking the forum, what would you have done?
Just outside Modesto and after dark it is not wise to go out in that area 
