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As eyewitnesses watched in horror, a 27-year-old Turlock man punched and stomped a toddler to death on a darkened country road Saturday night in Stanislaus County before a police officer shot and killed the attacker. Eyewitnesses tried to stop the man, who swung and slammed the child into the asphalt behind his parked four-door Toyota pickup. Investigators spent Father's Day trying to understand and cope with the savage attack on Bradbury Road, 10 miles west of Turlock near cow pastures and dairy farms. The boy's beating left police and rescue workers badly shaken, said Deputy Royjindar Singh. "Why would somebody do this?" Singh said. "In the shadows and light it looked like he had hit an animal," said Dan Robinson, the chief of Crows Landing Volunteer Fire Department, who came upon the chaos driving home from a late dinner in Turlock, in an interview with the Modesto Bee. "As we backed up again, I could see that he had blood on his arms. I could see that it was a small child." Robinson jumped from his vehicle and confronted the man, who lunged at him. Robinson said the man wasn't screaming and wasn't loud, but was forceful, saying "demons" were in the boy. "Give me the knife. Give me the knife," the man said as he grabbed for a pen in the firefighter's front pocket. "There was a total hollowness in his eyes," Robinson said, "like I could see right through to the back of his head." An elderly couple was first on the scene, calling 911 about