A harrowing 911 call from a child led authorities to a Missouri residence last week, where they discovered the lifeless body of 47-year-old Suzette Flores in the garage. Her partner, 34-year-old Felipe Ayala III, was subsequently taken into custody.

“I need somebody, my dad is hitting my mother,” the child urgently informed the dispatchers. “I need a police officer.”

Filled with fear, the boy expressed his distress to the dispatcher, who advised him to retreat to a bedroom and secure the door. During the call, he conversed with other siblings present in the home, including an older brother who could be heard saying, “They have been doing this forever and I am tired of it.”

The probable cause affidavit withheld the children’s ages and the victim’s name, but KYTV later identified her.

At another point in the call, the boy anxiously stated, “I think my dad is coming,” and pleaded, “Are they on the way, ma’am? I am very scared, ma’am.”

“”I do not know what he is doing to my momma,” the boy said. “I hear banging she is not yelling or nothing anymore. It is just quiet. I do not hear her anymore. I do not know what he did to her.”

Pc Statement Ayala by kc wildmoon

The boy starts crying  before a male voice calls for the children to come to him. A short time late, the officers arrive, and the boy asks dispatch to tell them to check on his mother, who was in the garage. The officers took the Ayala into custody and brought the caller and his two siblings to safety.

In the garage, the probable cause statement says, police found Flores on the floor of the garage “with her head covered in blood” and “fragments of skull and brain matter around [her] head.”

At a later interview, one of the children told police that their father had been behaving differently lately, including being armed with a knife earlier in the day he beat Flores to death  and “believing people were out to get him.” The boy who called 911 told officers that his mother and father began fighting with Ayala choking his mom and hitting her in the head while saying “you made me do this.” He also said that Ayala told the kids they were next.

A neighbor also told police that he heard a woman screaming “please stop” and saw through his window “a larger framed male” pacing in the Ayala garage and “hitting something on the ground.” That witness apparently did not call 911.

Police found a bloody hammer near Flores’ body, and Ayala’s clothing and body had blood spatter. He refused to speak with officers except to claim that a warrant for a DNA sample was “not valid.”

Springfield Police said Ayala had previously been charged with property damage, drug possession, armed criminal action, assault, and domestic assault.

Ayala was charged with first degree murder and is being held without bond.