A protective pooch is being credited with alerting a South Carolina family that their babysitter was abusing their 7-month-old son.
The babysitter, Alexis Khan, 22, pleaded guilty to assault and battery in Charleston Count Court on Monday and was facing one to three years in prison for abusing the tyke.
Benjamin and Hope Jordan, of Charleston,told local WCSC-TV that they first grew suspicious of Khan after their dog began acting aggressively toward her.
“About five months into her being our baby sitter, we started to notice that our dog was very protective of our son when she would come in the door,” Benjamin Jordan told the station.
“He was very aggressive towards her and a few times we actually had to physically restrain our dog from going towards her.”
Suspecting something was up, the couple placed an iPhone under a couch to record Khan’s day with their son, Finn, while they were at work.
Jordan said the device caught Kahn cursing and slapping the child.
“It started with cussing,” Jordan told WCSC-TV. “Then you hear slap noises and his crying changes from a distress cry to a pain cry.
“I just wanted to reach through the audio tape, go back in time and just grab him up,” he said.
Kahn was arrested and later confessed.
She’ll have to serve at least one year of her sentence and will be placed on a child abuse registry, the station said.
Benjamin Jordan told the WCSC-TV, “Had our dog not alerted us to the trouble, had my wife’s instincts not said we need to make something happen, it could have been Finn that was killed by the babysitter. You never know.”
