BATON ROUGE - A man spent weeks beating his 2-year-old son with a belt and did nothing to address an apparent head injury in the days leading up to the toddler's death, according to police. 

The Baton Rouge Police Department said Anderson King, 25, was arrested Monday and initially booked for second-degree cruelty to juveniles after his son Kyland died in a hospital Sunday. On Tuesday, police said his charge was upgraded to first-degree murder.

Police said King, who lived at the OYO Hotel along Airline Highway, admitted to hospital staff that he repeatedly whipped the toddler with a leather belt because the child kept urinating on himself. King said the beatings happened over the "past couple weeks."

The day of his son's death, King admitted he struck the child all over his body roughly a dozen times and only stopped after the belt wrapped around his son's neck. King said his son later fell unconscious, and he left the boy at the hotel to find the child's mother.

"... instead of calling 911, he left the victim in the hotel room unresponsive and went to get the victim's mother from work," police wrote in an arrest warrant.

Once they returned, the parents brought the 2-year-old to a hospital where he later died. Police noted the child was "severely beaten" with several "old and fresh" injuries all over his body. 

King later added that his son had fallen down a staircase at the hotel days earlier and said he had not "acted the same" since the fall, but he did nothing to seek medical attention for his son. 

A preliminary autopsy report from the coroner said the boy died from multiple blunt force injuries. The coroner ruled his death a homicide.