TULALIP — The punishment was called “Block-Head School.”
For a Tulalip child, it meant lugging a 30- to 35-pound cinder block around the yard, according to court papers.
When Tulalip police were called to investigate a child abuse complaint earlier this week, they found that the boy had open wounds, both fresh and partly healed, on his hands.
They also found scratches on his face, a bruise under his left eye as well as red marks and bruising on his chest, arms, back and legs.
The boy’s stepfather, 53, was arrested for investigation of first-degree assault of a child and booked into the Snohomish County Jail. A judge Wednesday set bail at $50,000.
Police were called to the boy’s home Monday morning when someone reported that a man with long gray hair and wearing pajamas was beating a child and dragging him into the woods, court papers said.
Someone in the home explained that the boy had not been listening, which led to his being subjected to Block-Head School, court papers said. The witness also alleged that the suspect “closed his hand and bopped him in the mouth” and pushed and kicked the boy down the driveway. The age of the child was redacted from the court records, which said that children ages 10, 4 and 1 were present that day.
Another witness said she was driving by when she saw the suspect drag the boy across a road, court papers said. The boy, she told police, was screaming and his face was bloodied. She said she told the suspect to stop. She said, at one point, the boy reached out to her but the suspect grabbed him and took him into a house, according to her statement.
The suspect allegedly was combative with police. When he was evaluated at Providence Regional Medical Center Everett, he allegedly made “suicide-by-cop type comments” and threatened to shoot officers if they came back to his property, according to court papers.
Police learned that they’d been called to the man’s home in 2016 for similar child abuse allegations.
Eric Stevick 425-339-3446; stevick@heraldnet.com.
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