A forty-year-old man from the United States was charged after the police intervened in his home and discovered that his five-year-old daughter was in a nailed-in closet. According to authorities, the girl “was afraid to go into the hole in the wall, but her father wanted her to do so and told her that if she did not go inside, she would be taken away from him.”
On Tuesday, the Washington County Attorney’s Office announced the arrest of 40-year-old Jon Thompson of Tontitown, Arkansas. A few days earlier, police said the man had locked the child in a nailed-up closet closet. Officers made the discovery during an intervention in which state Department of Human Services employees were about to remove the child from the home, Tontitown police said, without specifying why authorities took custody of the child.
Child locked in a closet. Father facing charges
Citing the police, CNN reported that Thompson initially did not want to let the authorities into the house and “repeatedly repeated that there was no child inside.” More than an hour after letting police inside, he “led officers to a bedroom closet,” the American broadcaster reported. The 21-second recording from the camera in the uniform of one of the officers shows a man kneeling under a clothes rack in a dressing room and after a while pulling a girl out of the closet, saying: “Hi, honey.”
Thompson faces charges including child endangerment. The 40-year-old paid bail in the amount of five thousand dollars (equivalent to approximately PLN 20.8 thousand – editor’s note) and was released from custody on Sunday. CNN journalists managed to reach him. – As a reminder: I love my daughter – he said, referring to his lawyer for further information. The latter has not yet responded to the sender’s request for comment. According to the police, the man will appear in court on December 4.
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The five-year-old was “afraid to go inside”.
Two days after the police intervened at Thompson’s home, his daughter told officers that she was in the closet with a flashlight that the 40-year-old had given her. “The minor says that she was afraid to enter the hole in the wall, but her father wanted her to do so and told her that if she did not go inside, she would be taken away from him,” the police report said. The document shows that the girl spent “about half an hour” in hiding, and after leaving the hiding place she was “emotional.” She said she hadn’t hidden in it before.
Tontitown Police Detective Keith Lindley commented on the case, saying that “some encounters will stay with us for the rest of our careers.” – This is one of those moments – he emphasized in a statement quoted by CNN. – We are sad, but relieved that (the girl) is safe – he added.
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