Police: Man threw boy across room
Arrest warrant lists more than a dozen ways child was abused
A Naugatuck man faces child abuse charges after he threw a boy across the room, lit fireworks in his mouth and made him sleep in a locked laundry room for four months, according to the warrant for his arrest.
Kevin Grant, 31, of Forest Street, was arrested Friday and charged with second-degree assault, intentional cruelty to persons, risk of injury to a child, second-degree reckless endangerment and disorderly conduct, police said.
Grant’s bond was set at $25,000; he posted it after his arraignment in Superior Court in Waterbury and is scheduled to return to court Nov. 10, judicial records show.
His wife, Kaitlin Elizabeth Baptiste, 29, of the same address, also was arrested because she was aware of the abuse. She was charged with risk of injury to a child, second-degree reckless endangerment and conspiracy to commit both intentional cruelty to persons and disorderly conduct, police said. Baptiste also posted her $10,000 bail and is due in court the same day as Grant.
An arrest warrant affidavit lays out more than a dozen ways Grant abused the boy, who is not identified but who was known to him. An anonymous complaint to the state Department of Children and Families brought child welfare workers and police to the house on Oct 1.
According to the warrant, the boy’s brother fell into a table while playing in the house with siblings in June and “cracked his head open.” The boy had been sitting on the couch, watching television at the time and did not injure his brother, he said in an interview with an investigator, but everyone started blaming him. Grant told the boy to go to the bathroom and look at his brother’s wound, the boy said. He also repeatedly struck him all over his body with a belt and picked the boy up by the back of his neck and threw him across the room, the warrant said.
After that, the boy was forced to stand in the corner, his head facing the wall, for about a week, the boy said. The boy even had to remain standing while eating, he said, and “wasn’t allowed to eat everything good that the rest of the family was eating,” the warrant said.
Grant made the boy sleep in a trailer outside the home one night, it said. He later came back took the boy into the garage, where he slept for about five nights. After that, Grant made the boy sleep in the laundry room for four months, the boy told investigators. His mother told the boy he was allowed to knock only if he had to go to the bathroom, the warrant said. But Grant would yell at him for knocking at all, telling him to pee his pants.
The boy said, “Kevin would constantly do things to him and make him do things that would hurt him,” according to the warrant.
For example, Grant would make the boy kneel on hard, uncooked rice for an entire day, the boy said. The rice would stick to his legs and hurt for days, the warrant said. He also made the boy do push ups until he couldn’t move his arms.
The boy described how Grant forced him to stand on a ladder with one foot in the air. Grant would place thumbtacks on the steps and under the ladder so when the boy could no longer hold his foot up, he would step on the tacks, “which caused his feet to bleed a lot,” the warrant said.
One day, Grant told the boy he needed to put a bottle rocket in his mouth and let Grant light the fuse. When the boy said he didn’t want to, Grant said it’s either that or he gets hit with the belt. So the boy agreed, he told investigators. Grant put the bottle rocket in the boy’s mouth, lit it and the rocket exploded, injuring the boy, the warrant said. His mother and Grant had to put medicine on his scarred cheeks so they would heal.
Grant also made the boy drink cups of hot sauce, the boy said, and the child would have stomach pains and throw up, the warrant said. Some of the abuse was more emotional than physical, according to the warrant. For example, Grant once took all of the boy’s drawings and burned them in front of him and gave the child’s books to his siblings.
Police scheduled an interview with Grant for 11:30 a.m. on Oct. 8 to talk about the allegations, the warrant said. But Grant called at 11:45 a.m. and said neither he nor Baptiste would be coming to the police station as per their attorney.