DES MOINES, Iowa (WKRC/KCCI/CNN Newsource) – A mother was arrested recently after she was caught on video abusing her son, who has autism, at a gas station.
Bystanders stepped in to help the child, and the woman is now facing charges.
The video is extremely hard to watch.
In it, the nine-year-old boy screams for help as his mother picks him up by the arms and throws him face-first on the ground.
“The child is screaming for his life. I’m like, ‘Unhand him! Let him go!’ I think I might have grabbed her or something to get her off of him,” said Michael Lomax.
Lomax and his fiancée, Arkeya Quinn, were inside the store, and intervened when they heard the child’s screams.
“She like threw him down and he smacked his face, and that’s when I came him and I pushed her like, ‘Get off of him.’ You don’t do that to a child,” said Quinn.
In a second video, the woman can be seen trying to leave before turning around to punch Quinn in the back of the head.
“She was screaming, yelling, throwing property prior to our arrival,” said Sgt. Paul Parizek. “Once we were able to get her in custody and calmed down a little bit, what we learned was that prior to our arrival, she had actually assaulted her child twice.”
Rejanie Morris is now charged with child endangerment and two counts of assault for putting her hands on Lomax and Quinn.
The couple says they stayed with the boy until things finally calmed down.
“When she was in the back of the police car, he was out playing with all the kids, and it was like you could see a whole different person,” said Quinn. “You could see his spirit just lift up. He was happy. He was enjoying himself. It’s like he wasn’t fearing anything anymore because she just wasn’t there.”
Police say the child is doing well and in the care of human services