The strange behavior of a 10-year-old boy has led to the arrest of an Odessa man on an endangering a child charge.
According to an Ector County Sheriff’s Office report, Medical Center Hospital staff called the sheriff’s office on Aug. 7 after a boy came into the hospital with a finger injury. The staff told deputies the boy was continuously biting one of his index fingers and lab work showed he had methamphetamine in his system.
The boy’s 26-year-old mother told deputies her son was acting normal when she sent him out to play with his siblings, but after awhile his brother brought him inside and said there was something wrong with him, the report stated.
The woman said she brought him to her mother’s house and then the hospital because he was unable to focus and kept biting his hand.
According to the report, she told deputies she didn’t know where her son could have gotten the methamphetamine because she doesn’t use it and never has it in her residence. However, she also said her boyfriend, Tyson Mullen, 31, was known to use the drug and had been over the night before.
During a search of the woman’s house, officers found multiple methamphetamine pipes and drug paraphernalia within reach of the children, the report stated.
One of the boy’s siblings also told a forensic interviewer that their mother told him his brother had gotten into some “stuff” in her room before taking him to their grandmother’s house, the report stated.
Mullen was booked into the Ector County jail Tuesday and remained there as of Wednesday afternoon on a $10,000 surety bond. Endangering a child/criminal negligence is a state jail felony punishable by six months to two years in prison.
