Based on what is reported here, dad GERALD LOVEON COOKE, JR. sounds like a totally dysfunctional drunk--unable to care for a child, out of touch with reality, and living in filth.
He also sounds like a single father, as there is NO MENTION of a mother, and boy was placed in foster care after Daddy was arrested.
What happened to Mom? If this f***ed up mess had custody of this boy, how did he get it?
http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2012/11/02/3640676/york-county-dad-faces-child-neglect.html
York County dad faces child neglect charge after boy, 2, found with knife
By Anna Douglas
Posted: Friday, Nov. 02, 2012
A woman found a 2-year-old boy with a knife in the roadway Thursday afternoon, leading the York County Sheriff's Office to arrest the child's father for child neglect.
Police went to the child’s home five minutes after the woman called police to say she’d found the boy in the street, alone and she’d returned him to his father.
They found the father, Gerald Loveon Cooke, Jr., 54, of Catawba, at home with the child and a silver knife on the front deck of the home, the report states.
He invited the sheriff’s deputies inside where, the report states, police found broken eggs, powder and other items strewn around the floor of the home.
Cooke was “unsteady on his feet” and there was a half empty bottle of vodka in the house, according to the Sheriff’s report.
Police asked Cooke whether a woman had been by his house in the past few minutes and he said “no” at first, according to the report. He later changed his story, the report states, and told deputies a woman had come by and tried to sell him pills.
The father told police that the 2-year-old boy “never left the house” Thursday, according to the report.
The Sheriff’s Office called the Department of Social Services and placed the boy with a foster family.
Cooke was arrested Thursday and was still in jail Friday afternoon, held on a $5,000 bond for one count of child neglect.