Mother Charged After Hitting Son With Cast Iron Skillet
(Senath, MO) A two-year-old boy is recovering from life threatening injuries and his mother is locked-up, accused of the unthinkable..
“It’s pretty disgusting!”
Chris Terry lives in the Senath Apartments in Dunklin County, MO, close to where the
boy was beaten, with a cast iron skillet.
Wednesday afternoon, police arrested the mother, 23-year-old Tameka Michelle Bryant, who admitted to hitting her son with a 12-inch cast iron skillet.
Nicole Mendoza has known Bryant for several years, “Her little boy would play with my kid. You know I got a two-year-old also. And they would be out here playing.”
Katelyn Terry lives next door to Bryant and has often driven her to Kennett to buy cigarettes, “That’s not right, for a mother to beat their child at all. I don’t like it. It’s not right for anybody to do that. They should be really, really punished for that stuff.”
Bryant’s arrest comes a little more than a month after two-year-old William Bryant was taken to Le Bonheur Children’s Hospital in Memphis with a fractured skull, swelling of the brain and a broken arm.
In early June, the boy’s mother gave Senath Police Chief Omar Karnes differing accounts on how the injuries occurred, “The first was that he fell off a 5-inch concrete step, or porch there, and fell on his face. All the injuries occurred then.”
Tameka Bryant also told police her son was injured while playing on a toy truck, “The story was he was pushing the little yellow dump truck when it fell off this concrete porch.”
Doctors at Le Bonheur determined the child’s injuries were not consistent with the woman’s “accident” story.
Police have not said what provoked the mother to hit her son with the skillet.
But people who live in this small Missouri town say, when it comes to children, there’s just no excuse, “They’re a gift from god. And why would you be able to do that to your kid? That’s really sad.”
We were unable to find out the child’s condition, but we’re told the youngster is out of the hospital and in the protective custody of Missouri Family Services.
Tameka Bryant returns to court later this month and remains jailed on a $100-thousand dollar cash only bond.
