The Bronx dad accused of beating his 4-year-old girl with an aluminum bat had to hold back tears of remorse in a jailhouse interview Thursday — but insisted he was innocent.
Noel Morales said his daughter got injured when she fell from a bed.
“I’m a good father. I would never hurt my little girl like that,” Morales, 32, told the Daily News.
“My only mistake is not taking her to the hospital sooner. I’m worried about her. I want to see her again,” he said.
Cops said he confessed to striking the girl three times with a bat — leaving her with a torn liver and serious injuries on her chest and back.
But Morales disputed that account, insisting that “I am not a violent man.”
The out-of-work hardhat said he’d gone to a construction site Saturday morning in search of employment.
He returned early that afternoon, just in time for his live-in girlfriend, Hortencia Rodriguez, to head out for her restaurant shift.
Morales was left to babysit his daughter Aileen Morales, which he said was not unusual.
“I always care for her. I pick her up from school most days. She’s my little girl,” he said from inside the detention center, struggling to contain his welling tears.
“We’re always together. She sleeps in our bed because she says she sees monsters,” Morales said.
Aileen’s serious injuries — which landed her in the intensive care unit at New York-Presbyterian Hospital Columbia — weren’t immediately visible, he said.
“She was playing. She was jumping on the bed when she fell and landed on the ground. She didn’t cry,” Morales recounted.
“She got up. I asked her, ‘Are you OK?’ She said yes and sat on the bed playing with my phone,” he said.
He said he regretted not taking immediate action.
“Kids fall all the time. I believed her. I should had taken her to the hospital right away,” he added.
When Rodriguez returned home, the family went to bed without issue — until Aileen began to complain of pain.
“She couldn’t sleep that night. She said her stomach hurt. We took her to the hospital. That’s when doctors noticed her injuries,” Morales said.
Police said Morales told them he lashed out at his daughter because he and her mother had a fight.
But Morales said that version of events was bogus.
“The police were called and they started asking (Aileen) if I hit her. She got nervous. They coerced her to say I hit her with a bat,” he asserted.
“I’m in jail for something I didn’t do,” he said.
“This is unfair. I want to be back home with my family. I’m worried about her.”