Child abuse suspect remains in jail

Published 10:10 pm Tuesday, October 6, 2009

EVERETT — The man Everett police believe dipped an 18-month-old boy’s feet in a pot of boiling water asked to be released from jail pending his trial.

An attorney for Zachary Wilson, 18, submitted a motion to Snohomish County Superior Court Judge Bruce Weiss on Tuesday that would allow Wilson to live with his parents, be placed on home monitoring or ordered not to be near small children. Anything but staying behind bars.

The judge said no.

Weiss denied the motion citing Wilson’s criminal history and ordered Wilson to remain at the Snohomish County Jail in lieu of $250,000 bail.

Wilson was charged with second-degree assault of a child in connection with the Aug. 22 scalding of his girlfriend’s son. He’s been convicted of three assaults since 2006.

The man’s mother, Heather Ogan, said Tuesday her son is innocent.

“Everything that’s going on is a lie,” Ogan said.

Detectives believe Wilson was watching the boy while the toddler’s mother was at work.

Wilson’s explanation about how the child was burned was deemed inconsistent with the horizontal burn lines on the boy’s ankles, Snohomish County deputy prosecutor Mark Roe wrote in charging papers.

In court Tuesday, Roe said Wilson told various stories about how the boy was injured. Wilson at first told detectives the child knocked over a pot of water. He later said the boy was burned by water in a bathtub, court papers said.

The burns are “textbook immersion injuries,” Roe wrote. He said Wilson’s claims that the boy stood still in scalding water in a bathtub are “fantastic.”

A child whose feet and ankles were burning would certainly want out, Roe wrote.

“It is simply inconceivable the child would simply stand still, anyplace, while his feet and ankles were searing,” Roe wrote. “He had to have been held.”

When detectives confronted Wilson’s about his versions of what happened, he began to cry and acknowledged that he immersed the boy’s feet in a pot of boiling water, court papers said.

“My son was scared that his girlfriend was going to lose her baby,” Wilson’s mother said.

The child was taken into state custody. The boy’s foster parents asked the judge in a letter not to release Wilson, fearing the man may pose a threat to other children.

Ogan said her son wasn’t treated fairly by police during the investigation.

“This is ripping my family apart,” she said. “I just know he’s innocent.”

Reporter Jackson Holtz: 425-339-3437 or jholtz@heraldnet.com.