fucking hell! Another one!
Texas Man Charged for Using Stungun on Stepson
Sat Sep 28, 2:58 PM ET
SWEENY, Texas (Reuters) - Police arrested a Texas man on child abuse charges on Friday after he allegedly used a 100,000-volt stun gun to discipline his 8-year-old stepson for missing the school bus.
Theodore Moody, 27, was charged with two counts of felony injury to a child and faces up to 20 years in prison if convicted. The boy's mother, Tsianina Moody, was charged for failure to report the abuse, for which she could be jailed for up to two years, said Brazoria County Sheriff's Investigator Buck Henson.
Moody, a stay-at-home father who quit his job as a truck driver this year, allegedly walked behind the child all the way to school on Monday and zapped him with the stun gun.
The device is sold as a self-defense tool and designed to incapacitate attackers with an electrical charge. Police said Moody's stun gun delivered a shock akin to a bad bee sting.
Moody told the Houston Chronicle he found it the only effective method of discipline with the boy.
"The belt didn't work; this did. It hurts much less than the belt. I've whipped his ass so hard that it left marks. That just didn't send the message and this did," he told the paper.
Clad in a sleeveless T-shirt, two-tone sunglasses and a cap that read "Marriage: the Leading Cause of Divorce," Moody appeared on TV news shows holding a stun gun he purchased after police took the original one and a paddle he said he used on the boy so much that it cracked.
Investigators were delighted with his comments. "He's pretty well used the right of free speech here, didn't he? The news media helped and awful lot on this one," said Henson.
Moody was being held in lieu of $15,000 bond, and his wife, in lieu of $4,000. Neither could be reached.
All four of the Moody's children were placed in foster care, after the stun gun incident, said Child Protective Services spokeswoman Estella Olguin. The couple have two children together, ages 2 and 3, and Mrs. Moody has a daughter, 11, and the boy. A judge is set to decide on Tuesday whether the children will remain in state custody.
Sweeny is about 65 miles southwest of Houston.