Authorities suspect man threw baby from car

 Update: 6/18/09

Prosecutors will seek the death penalty for Richard McTear Jr., the man who is accused of throwing his ex-girlfriend’s baby out of a car on a Florida highway, killing the infant.

McTear  has pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder and other charges.

Assistant State Attorney Jalal Harb told a court hearing Wednesday that the state will pursue the death penalty if McTear is convicted.

(CNN) — A Florida man threw a 4-month-old boy out the window of a moving car Tuesday after a fight with the infant’s mother, investigators said.

Police say infant Emanuel Murray died after his mother’s ex-boyfriend threw him from a car on a Florida interstate.

Emanuel Murray’s body was found by a passing motorist on Interstate 275 early Tuesday morning, the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Department said. His mother’s ex-boyfriend, 20-year-old Anthony McTear Jr., has been charged with first-degree murder, the department said.

Police went to the mother’s apartment about 3:15 a.m. The mother, Jasmine Bedwell, 18, told investigators that McTear hit her several times and threatened “to kill the both of y’all,” the sheriff’s department said in a statement announcing the charges.

McTear threw a car seat containing the child across the room during the fight, causing the boy to fall onto the apartment’s concrete floor, investigators said. He then picked up the boy and drove off in his car, throwing the child out while on the interstate, according to the sheriff’s department.

The child’s body was found about 4:30 a.m. An autopsy showed the boy died of blunt trauma to the head, the county medical examiner’s office said.

McTear is not related to the child, sheriff’s spokeswoman Debbie Carter said.

McTear is facing additional charges of burglary with battery, felony battery, aggravated child abuse and kidnapping after his Tuesday arrest, the sheriff’s department said.

A video shown on CNN affiliate WFLA TV shows McTear being led out of a Tampa police squad car after his arrest. He ducked his head as TV cameras surrounded him on his walk into a police building.

When asked by reporters if he had thrown the child out of the car window, McTear answered, “It’s a dirty game. A dirty game.”