Pa. Mom Said Her Missing 4-Year-Old Was Hit by a Car. Now She and Boyfriend Are Accused of Murdering Him

Dominique Bailey, 28, and her boyfriend, Kevin Spencer, 30, are each charged with murder, endangering the welfare of a child, abuse of a corpse, making false reports and other charges

Days after Thanksgiving, on his fourth birthday, Damari Carter’s mother moved them out of her father’s apartment in Philadelphia and in with her new boyfriend.

Twelve days later, a downstairs neighbor “heard Damari screaming,” as the little boy was allegedly beaten on December 7, Staff Inspector Ernest Ransom of the Philadelphia Police Department tells PEOPLE.

That was the last time anyone reports hearing Damari alive, according to Ransom.

“Damari was so sweet,” his cousin, Aiyana Parrish says in an interview with PEOPLE. “He just lit up the room any time he was in there. He was always smiling, laughing, dancing around.”

Later that December day, following Damari’s screams, his mother, Dominique Bailey, and her boyfriend, Kevin Spencer, left the apartment – without the child – for 24 minutes, according to surveillance footage cited in a police report obtained by PEOPLE, which lists the case as a homicide.

The next day, Spencer is seen “dragging a trash bag out of the house,” according to footage cited in the report.

Bailey and Spencer are each charged with murder, endangering the welfare of a child, abuse of a corpse and making false reports, according to a set of press releases this weekend regarding the child's presumed death. Spencer, 30 is additionally charged with criminal conspiracy and tampering with evidence.

The 4-year-old had a difficult childhood, Parrish says, noting that Bailey – who had met Damari’s father at a homeless shelter – often got into arguments with family members that she was living with, leading to a set of disruptive moves that took mother and son from Damari’s birth state Texas to Philadelphia in June 2023.

“He was never really allowed to enjoy being a kid,” Parrish says, noting that when Damari got hungry or upset. “She’d say he was doing too much and try to keep him locked away.”

Damari – who loved dinosaurs and anything Jurassic Park – was mostly non-verbal and family suspected that he had a learning disability, although he had not been diagnosed, Parrish says.

“He was starting to get the gist of talking,” Parrish says, noting that he was supposed to go to a speech therapy program.

Family became concerned about Damari’s whereabouts, Parrish says, when a former friend of Bailey’s was told by the child’s mother that Damari had been hit by a car and died. Feeling that the mother sounded “a little too calm,” the friend then contacted Bailey’s father.

Parrish – who was formerly in the military and has her own 4-year-old son – began investigating, she says: searching for local articles about traffic fatalities. She found none. (There is “no evidence” that Damari was fatally struck by a car, per the police report.)

In December, Parrish, who lives in South Carolina, contacted the local news outlet ABC6 about the missing child, telling PEOPLE that concerned family members had not been able to get the attention of police and that she had not been permitted to file a missing person’s report because she was out of state. (In press releases, police say no one had ever reported Damari missing.)

The police report confirms that Parrish had contacted a reporter who passed the information along to the department, along with a missing person poster handmade by a family member – sparking an investigation.

In an interview with police January 5, Bailey, 28, told detectives per the police that “she did see Kevin Spencer beat Damari frequently and that on the day he went missing, Spence beat him so bad that his head was swollen and his eyes were blackened,” per the police report.

According to the police report, Bailey further told investigators that her son had died soon after the beating and that “she heard Spence put him in a trashcan.”

But, the mother allegedly refused to tell them where her son’s body was located, per police.

Police prepared a search warrant for Spencer’s home on the 3800 block of Reno St. in Philadelphia, and during that search police apprehended Spencer, who was taken in for questioning January 5 and subsequently charged.

Staff Inspector Ernest Ransom tells PEOPLE that police were unaware of any reports of abuse against Damari in the past. “We are still investigating that aspect,” he says.

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Damari’s early years were more stable with his father acting as the main caregiver until 2022, according to Parrish. But sometime after the couple divorced, Bailey took the child and eventually blocked contact with the father, who was hoping to gain custody, according to Parrish who has remained in touch with him. Per Parrish, Bailey was afraid she would look like a bad mother if she left her son with his father.

Damari’s body has not been found, according to police. It is unclear if Bailey or Spencer have entered pleas or retained attorneys to speak on their behalf.

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