Dad charged with child abuse after hogtying 5-year-old son (Santa Fe, New Mexico)

Dad is identified as DAMON GARDNER.

http://www.santafenewmexican.com/Local%20News/092112ChildAbuse

Police: Father charged with child abuse after hogtying 5-year-old

Nico Roesler | The New Mexican Posted: Thursday, September 20, 2012

A Santa Fe man was charged with child abuse Thursday after police say he hogtied his 5-year-old son as a disciplinary measure.

The statement of probable cause against Damon Gardner, 28, says that he told the child’s uncle that he had tied the boy up “because he doesn’t believe in spanking his child.”

The child was found by his uncle just before 9 a.m. Thursday after he heard a “scuffling noise” in the bathroom next to the uncle’s bedroom in a house in the 1200 block of Vegas Verdes Drive, according to the statement.

The document says the boy’s uncle intervened when he saw the boy hogtied with his hands and feet tied together. A “rope was then tied to his feet and hands causing his feet to bend behind him,” according to the document.

Santa Fe police Capt. Aric Wheeler said placing a child in such a position could cause breathing problems. Wheeler said the state Children, Youth and Families Department was contacted and would conduct its own investigation into the report.

The uncle tried to get Gardner to stop, according to the document. But, “Gardner told him that if he or anyone else called police that ‘it would be very … bad for all of them and the police.’ ” According to the statement, Gardner told the uncle to “mind his own business” and “stay out of his parenting skills.”

Gardner allegedly told the child’s uncle that he was tying his son up because the boy had “punched him in the stomach and started throwing things around,” the document states.

The two men then got in a fight, and someone else in the residence called police.

Gardner’s wife told the responding officer that she saw her son lying face down on the bathroom floor tied up, according to the document, and she took him to a bedroom, where Gardner eventually untied him.

Gardner was booked into the Santa Fe County jail at about 12:37 p.m. on a single charge of child abuse and is being held without bond, according to the jail website.