WESTFIELD – A city man will be on probation for two years after he pleaded guilty last week to a charge of assault and battery on a child with injury.
Jason D. Woody, 30, of 40 City View Boulevard, was also ordered to make no threats or violence toward the victim, his six-year-old son, and to strictly abide by all abuse prevention orders.
City police became involved with the family when a five-year-old boy was treated at Baystate Medical Center after arriving with an almost completely bruised face with one eye swollen almost shut, ears which had been bruised inside and out and red marks and bruises on his back and torso.
Dets. Roxanne Bradley and Daniel Gustafson were notified of the boy’s injuries and went to the hospital.
Bradley reports that when they initially spoke with the boy’s mother she appeared to be upset when she realized that there was official interest in her son’s injuries. The detective reported that the woman immediately said that she didn’t hit her son and didn’t think her husband hit him either.
Bradley said that she was told that the little boy had been beaten up on the school bus the day before. The woman said that she had slept with her son the night before because she feared he might have a concussion and had taken him to her pediatrician who referred her to the hospital.
The boy was interviewed and said that he had been hit on the bus. He denied that his injuries happened at home but said that his father had helped him clean up after the bus.
Bradley reports that the bus driver said that she took particular notice of the boy when she brought him home on the day in question because his father, a stay-at-home dad, was not at the bus stop when she got there so she kept him on the bus.
The bus driver said that the little boy was cheerful and showed no signs of injury while he waited for her to contact her dispatcher to obtain permission, per policy, to keep the boy on the bus and return later on her route.
She was allowed to do so but, before she could leave, the boy’s father came on the run and the boy went home with him.
When Woody was interviewed he said that his son looked like he had fallen down when he got him from the bus and said that a girl hit him. Woody said he did not want to make a fuss about the boy being punched by a girl and let the matter drop.
He also told the detectives that his son wet his pants but he said he does not spank the boy.
The detectives and a Department of Families and Children investigator were also able to interview the boy’s three-year-old sister who told them how her brother got his “boo boos”.
The girl said that her daddy squeezed her brother and gave him boo boos in the bathroom because he “peed his pants” on the bus.
Bradley reports the little girl said that “Her daddy doesn’t give her boo boos because she doesn’t pee on the bus.”
Bradley said Woody “denies and denies and denies, even after what his daughter said” but she said that the investigators had other evidence.
Not only had the bus driver paid attention to the boy before she let him off the bus but the principal spoke with the other kindergarten pupils who had been seated with him that day.
The principal told the investigators that the children denied there had been any physical altercation that day but said that one of the five-year-old girls acknowledged that, on the day before, she had playfully slapped the boy’s arm.
Bradley reports that the detectives completed their investigation into the boy’s injuries which were far in excess of what a five-year-old girl could have inflicted and which could not have been missed by the bus driver. She said the detectives had planned to arrest Woody but, when they went looking for him, they found he had checked himself into the psychiatric unit of a local medical facility.
Within days of the incident, Woody and his wife had agreed to DCF service plans which included stipulation that Woody “reside outside the home” and that he have no unsupervised contact with his children.
Woody was charged with assault and battery on a child with injury.
When he appeared before Judge Philip A. Contant in Westfield District Court on Nov. 25, the judge found that the evidence would support a guilty finding and allowed him to plead guilty.
Woody was placed on probation for two years, ordered to comply with DCF service plans, to submit to a mental health evaluation and to complete treatment prescribed, and to complete an anger management program. He was assessed $90.
