Six-and-a-half minutes.

Six-and-a-half minutes for two men to try to stop a father from beating “the demons” out of his two-year-old son in the middle of a dark country road. Six-and-a-half minutes for a young woman to crouch in her car and watch in helpless shock. Six-and-a-half minutes for a police officer to land in a helicopter, run across a cow pasture, and shoot the man squarely in the forehead.

Six-and-a-half minutes of horror.

“It seemed like forever,” said Lisa Mota, 23, who was driving to her parents’ house when she came upon the scene after 10 p.m. Saturday. “I need to get this out of my head and I don’t think it will be for the rest of my life.”

On Monday, all that’s left of the violence is blood seeping into the cracks of West Bradbury Road, just outside the Central Valley town of Turlock. Parents and children came and went all day placing ceramic angels and stuffed animals along the barbed wire fence. One white teddy bear held a heart that said, “Besos y Abrazos.” It means kisses and hugs.

“The terrible man got to die in an instant, but his baby had to suffer endlessly,” said Joel Arana, 36, a father of a toddler who stopped by to pay his respects. “It’s not right. But God will take care of it.”

The man has been identified by police as Sergio Casian Aguiar, 27. He and his wife had been separated. In an interview with detectives Monday, Frances Liliana Casian said she didn’t know why Aguiar would do such a thing. He had no police record and she didn’t know of any mental illness, said Deputy Royjindar Singh, a spokesman for the Stanislaus County Sheriff’s Department. A toxicology test for drugs and alcohol is under way.

As news of the roadside beating spread across the country, letters of support and thanks poured in for the pilot who landed the helicopter in the dark cow pasture and the Modesto police officer who shot Aguiar.

“That baby needed help and I knew we had to do something,” the pilot, Sheriff’s Deputy Rob Latapie said in a statement.

“I have never seen anything like that before and I hope I never have to again,” said Officer Jerry Ramar, who fired the fatal shot.

Three cars stopped on the darkened lane that night. Three 911 calls were placed. And two men who happened upon this scene defied their fears of what this man was capable of, what weapons he might have, and tried to save a child.

It wasn’t enough.

Dan Robinson, chief of the Crows Landing volunteer fire department, was driving home Saturday night with his wife and two grown children when their headlights shined on a man standing behind a parked pickup truck, which was in the next lane, facing oncoming traffic. At first, they thought maybe it was a hunter with a dead animal.

“As they slowed down, someone noticed it was an infant,” Singh said. “He stopped, backed up and the dad got out.”

It’s unclear when the beating began, but the first 911 call came at just after 10:13 p.m. It was from someone named Mike, who may be Robinson’s son, Singh said. He gave just a brief description before the cell phone went dead.

By then, Robinson had confronted Aguiar and “was trying to get him to stop, trying to pull him off, or away from the baby,” Singh said. “The suspect just pushed him away and continued doing what he was doing.”

A minute later, at 10:14 p.m., a pickup truck with three people in their 20s pulled up, facing Aguiar’s truck. One of them called 911. A young man, who Singh hasn’t identified, jumped out and ran to help Robinson.

“It was the shock of seeing what was going on, seeing this person with hands bloodied,” said Singh, who was on the scene as the witnesses were interviewed. “At first they weren’t sure how to react. You walk upon that scene and you see it and it’s like, ‘What are you doing?’ It’s like, “What the heck are you doing?’ “

The two men wrestled with Aguiar, trying to get him to stop, trying to pull him away from the baby. But Aguiar, with the child in his arm, kept attacking the toddler, “punching, slapping, shaking,” Singh said.

Robinson told reporters that “there was a total hollowness in his eyes,” and Aguiar said he was beating “the demons” out of the boy.

At 10:17, Mike called 911 again.

At 10:19, the sheriff’s helicopter that had been patrolling the area shined its spotlight on the scene, then landed in the cow pasture.

Officer Ramar jumped out, Singh said, and ran about 30 yards to the electrified fence that keeps the cows in and ordered the man to stop. By this time, Aguiar had the child on the ground and was stomping on him.

“Put your hands up. Step away from the baby,” Ramar called out, according to Singh.

Instead, Singh said, Aguiar raised his middle finger and began to kick the toddler lying on the roadway.

At 10:20, Ramar aimed his gun and fired. Aguiar died at the scene. Two deputies rushed to the child and performed CPR, but the boy remained limp. He was pronounced dead at the local hospital.

At 10:30, Singh arrived. The night was cool and clear. The only lights came from the headlights of the cars that had stopped to help and the flashing reds and blues of police vehicles. It was still so dark, Singh couldn’t even see the helicopter in the pasture.

But he saw the deputies who tried to revive the child, the police officer who shot the man, and the witnesses who tried to help. They all were consoling each other, he said.

“I know how they were feeling,” he said. “It’s like you wish you could have done more.”