Utah’s TREMONTON (KSL.com) According to criminal accusations, a couple strapped a 3-year-old daughter with special needs to a bed so she couldn’t escape, among other acts of abuse.
Avery Rose Williams, 23, of Thatcher, Box Elder County, and Gaige Tobler, 22, of Tremonton, were both charged earlier this month in 1st District Court with six counts of child endangerment, a third-degree felony, and two counts of aggravated child abuse, one second-degree felony and one third-degree felony. Two more counts of child abuse, a class A misdemeanor, were also brought against Tobler.
According to prosecution records, Tobler is seeing Williams, the mother of a 3-year-old daughter who is primarily nonverbal (and) autistic. In February, he moved in with Williams.
According to the accusations, two weeks after moving in, (Tobler) started providing unsupervised care for (the child) for up to 12 hours at a time.
According to the authorities, the child broke her leg at home with Tobler in March.
She needed stitches for a head injury that occurred a week later while Tobler was the sole person at home with the girl. The allegations state that when Mom came home in the middle of April, she noticed two significant bruises on (her) forehead.
According to a police booking document, Williams repeatedly claimed that the (daughter) falls a lot when asked about the injuries, and she blamed this on an unidentified neurological condition. However, a medical professional concluded that there is no history of high-velocity or high-impact incidents, despite the girl’s history of being awkward or bumping into objects. The aforementioned injuries and findings cannot be explained by an unintentional injury, a preexisting medical condition, reasonable discipline, or benign events, to a fair degree of medical certainty.
According to the affidavit, the youngster suffered more injuries in June that the police said were burns, along with severe bruising on her wrists, ankles, and the heel of her hand that doctors indicated might have been brought on by friction and ligature. According to one nurse, she believed that the child’s wrists and legs had been forcibly restrained because of the tattoos and wounds.
On June 12, after obtaining a search warrant for the house, officers discovered the girl and her brother, who was one year old, imprisoned in a bedroom.
The state of the room’s neglect was startling. The chamber smelt like sour milk and soiled diapers, but the entire house smelled like marijuana. Old food was strewn under the bed and all over the floor. And all the diapers were filthy. There was hardly any empty space on the floor. According to the affidavit, I discovered a container of chicken nuggets stuffed between the mattress and bed frame with the elder child. This worried me because it was a choking hazard and she was in a closed room. Since decaying food had been allowed to attract bugs in a closet and a pronounced rotten odor emanated from the refrigerator, this general negligence was a recurring theme throughout the house.
According to criminal documents, police also discovered the girl in a crib with two white straps attached to the head and foot of the cot. These straps were several feet long and were thought by medical professionals to be the reason for the abrasions on the girl’s wrists and ankles.
Tobler informed the police that in order to prevent the girl from gaining access to items in the rest of the house, they must confine her in her room. Gaige rejected any form of restraint. According to the affidavit, Gaige also denied hurting the girl in any way.
In the affidavit, the officers also stated that Williams first refused to cooperate with the warrant and became uncooperative as soon as it was served. According to the complaint, investigators claim that Williams reportedly acknowledged transporting the girl to a hospital outside of Box Elder County in order to avoid calling the local Division of Child and Family Services.
The couple’s next court appearance is set for July 7.
