Man jailed after preschool reports possible abuse

Police say they arrested a Santa Fe man Monday evening after his 3-year-old daughter told staff at her school that he had hit her with a stick.

Wilson Molina-Vicente, 28, is charged with one count of felony child abuse, according to a criminal complaint filed Tuesday in the Santa Fe County Magistrate Court. The complaint says a staff member at the preschool that Molina-Vicente’s daughter attends noticed bruises on the girl’s backside when she was helping the toddler go to the bathroom.

When paramedics asked the girl how she got the bruises, the girl told police her father had hit her with a stick because she hadn’t been eating her food, the complaint says. According to the complaint, Molina-Vicente admitted to police that he was stressed and became upset with his daughter, so he hit her on the buttocks with a wooden dowel from a birdcage.

Court documents show that Molina-Vicente was ordered to be released from jail on a $2,500 unsecured bond, with a GPS monitoring anklet and was ordered not to have contact with the child. According to the criminal complaint, the state Children, Youth and Families Department was called to the incident, and the girl was released to her mother’s custody.

As of Tuesday afternoon, Molina-Vicente was still in jail, according to the Santa Fe County jail website.