Candice Stroud: Florida mom, 30, arrested twice in same week for assaulting husband and child abuse
If you or anyone you know suspects child abuse, you are urged to immediately call the Childhelp National Child Abuse Hotline at 1-800-4-A-Child or 1-800-422-4453, or go to www.childhelp.org. All calls are toll-free and confidential and the hotline is available 24/7 in more than 170 languages.
JACKSONVILLE, FLORIDA: The Putnam County Sheriff’s Office has revealed how a woman was arrested for the second time in six days on battery and child abuse charges respectively.
Candice Stroud, 30, was arrested on February 18 on a battery charge for physically assaulting her husband. She was arrested again on Thursday, February 23, on child abuse charges for assaulting a child. Authorities said the second charge stemmed from her first arrest, which took place after she reportedly struck her husband "across his back with her fist" and pulled out a "clump of hair."
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Battery and child abuse charges
Stroud's husband, who has not been identified, was reportedly seeking an injunction against his wife when he showed deputies videos of her abusing a child. When investigators interviewed the child, she told them she was hit in the face "several times with a phone." Detectives eventually obtained a warrant for Stroud's arrest and arrested the suspect from a home in the Hollister area. The 30-year-old is currently in Putnam County Jail on a $5,000 bond.
Curtis Fallgatter, a former federal prosecutor unrelated to the case, said that child abuse charges carried up to five years in prison. Furthermore, it could also mean a child is removed from the home depending on the investigation. Speaking to News4Jax, Fallgatter called the situation “unusual” and said that he had not come across a case like Stroud's in his decades of practicing law.
'There’s a lot of things they can do'
“I’ve done a lot of battery cases. Child abuse cases, if they happen the same day, they’re normally expected to be resolved with a single arrest,” Fallgatter told the outlet. The DCF will have to investigate the case considering the reports detail allegations of child abuse, he explained. Their findings could ultimately impact how Stroud was allowed to deal with certain children in the future. “If they believe she is an unfit mother or a potential danger to her children, there’s a lot of things they can do. One is, of course, they can have supervised visitation or they can take the children from the home,” Fallgatter said, adding that parenting classes and counseling could be required as well based on DCF's findings.
MEAWW previously reported how two parents from Grand Haven, Michigan, were arrested on Wednesday, February 22, after allegedly dozing off for hours in the front seats of a parked car while their four-month-old child almost died in the backseat due to the freezing temperatures. Court records stated the incident occurred on January 29. The baby's parents, Phillip Nass, 32, and Crystal Kanouse, 30, admitted to the Michigan police about using meth in the days prior and were likely going through detox.
Their four-month-old son was in the back of the vehicle in an unsecured car seat. Neither was he dressed for the cold nor did he have a blanket while strapped to an infant carrier. The child's skin was frozen, according to officials, and his feet had become blue. Additionally, the boy was also covered in his own urine and feces. Emergency responders immediately rushed the four-month-old to the hospital, where he was treated and is currently recovering.