Custodial dad with history of DV arrested after 2-year-old son got high on meth; mother is "missing" (St. Paul, Minnesota)

I don't trust a word that this dickhead dad says.

He claims the mother of his 2-year-old son just "disappeared" five weeks ago.

And yet it is very clear that he is far from a protective parent, based on the fact that his CURRENT girlfriend who had a domestic violence "no contact" order based on unspecified "terroristic threats" (death threats?) back in November. And that's not even going into how much he has f***ed up as a father.

The mother needs to be relocated NOW, because it is virtually certain that she has also been the victim of domestic violence, intimidation, and/or death threats--that is, IF she is still alive.

Dad is identified as JOSEPH MICHAEL RAY.

http://www.twincities.com/crime/ci_25320896/st-paul-toddler-brought-hospital-high-meth-dad

St. Paul 2-year-old brought to hospital high on meth; dad charged

By Emily Gurnon

Posted: 03/11/2014 12:01:00 AM CDT
Updated: 03/11/2014 04:18:22 PM CDT

A 2-year-old boy was high on methamphetamine Friday after his father brought him to a "dope house" where a resident was smoking the drug, prosecutors said Tuesday.

The father, Joseph Michael Ray, 22, of St. Paul, was charged with child endangerment. According to the criminal complaint filed Tuesday in Ramsey County District Court:

Police were called Friday to Children's Hospital in St. Paul, where medics had brought him. Ray told police that the toddler had fallen asleep about 12:30 that morning, and that Ray had slept next to him. Ray's father woke him up at one point, asking where the boy was.

They pulled off his covers and found him "in a deep, deep sleep like he was drugged up," Ray told police. The two shook him to wake him up.

Hospital staff said the boy was lethargic and unresponsive. He appeared pale, dehydrated and had chapped lips. "As officers spoke to Ray, (the boy) stared at police and didn't speak."

Ray said that the boy's mother had abandoned them about five weeks earlier and that he and the boy had been living at Ray's grandmother's house.

Police asked if it was possible that the boy had ingested something. Ray "eventually admitted" that he had taken the toddler to a house across the street from the grandmother's residence in the 600 block of East Jessamine Street about two days earlier.

"Ray said one of the residents was smoking methamphetamine and he acknowledged that they shouldn't have been there," the complaint said.

After that, Ray said, a friend's mother told him the boy looked "kinda sick" and suggested Ray give him a teaspoon of "liquid cherry Tylenol gel or something."

Later that day, the boy looked even worse. He got "really sunk-eyed," Ray told police.

Doctors determined that the boy was severely dehydrated. He tested positive for amphetamine.

Ray also was charged with violating a domestic abuse no-contact order; with him at the hospital was his girlfriend, whom he had made terroristic threats against in November. He had been given a suspended sentenced on that crime Feb. 7.

Ray was being held Tuesday at the Ramsey County jail.