Mercedes Compton and Jared Hamilton: Utah couple used ELECTRIC SHOCKS to punish children
WEBER COUNTY, UTAH: A couple from Utah has been arrested for handcuffing two kids together and administering electric shocks as a cruel form of discipline. The suspects are the children's mother, 30-year-old Mercedes Compton, and her boyfriend, Jared Hamilton, also 30. Police said that the security camera footage showed the couple using “an electronic shocking device” on the children.
The children, a six-year-old girl and a five-year-old boy, were reportedly shocked on their arms and backs to discipline them, arrest records show. Hamilton allegedly detained the children allowing Compton to subsequently shock them. In the footage, the child is seen “violently pulling his arm away from the device” and trying to get away from Hamilton. However, he couldn’t “because he was handcuffed to his 6-year-old sister,” police said. Police said that Compton allegedly took the electronic shocking device from Hamilton and “was waving it around in front of both of the kids before reaching out and touching the 5-year-old child with it.” Both the suspects have been arrested on two charges of child abuse with the intention to inflict serious physical injury, and remained behind bars at the Weber County Sheriff’s Office as of Wednesday, March 30.
READ MORE
Two years on, brutal murder of little Emily Jones still haunts a community
Christopher Gregor: Dad who taunted son, 6, on treadmill calling him FAT charged with his murder
In another incident earlier this month, Shameka White, a Georgia mom was charged for allegedly starving her son to the point that he weighed half of what he should for a child his age. On March 6, the paramedics responded to a Gaston County home after White believed her son was having a seizure. The boy was rushed to the hospital, where medical staff reportedly discovered his body temperature was 83 degrees and that the boy was extremely malnourished, which causes the seizure. Medical staff said that effects of starvation had caused bruising all over his body. The toddler was found suffering from various health complications, including acute liver failure, respiratory failure, and brain atrophy due to starvation. Despite the critical condition of her son, White allegedly appeared emotionless at the hospital. is charged with intentional child abuse.
More such horrific cases of child abuse have been making the news. Recently, a Texas mother was charged for abandoning her two children in a filthy motel room for weeks, leaving them with hardly any food. She pulled her daughter, 12, from school to care for her 1-year-old brother full-time. Ashli Rene Lock, 37, was charged with felony child abandonment by authorities. Police discovered the children living alone in their own filth at a Quality Inn in Houston. “The one year old was sleeping in a soiled diaper.” The girl, 12, told police that she had “not left this hotel room in about a month,” as per the court filing. She also alleged that Lock “has not provided her with adequate food for her baby brother, so she feeds him mac and cheese.” Lock reportedly worked as a bartender.