Father accused of abusing 2 kids, including toddler
A 24-year-old father has been locked up on charges of abusing two of his children, including an 18-month-old son who he repeatedly punched in the head, resulting in brain injuries, state police Trooper Daniel Switzer alleged in court papers.
Brett Allen Fields, formerly of the 7000 block of Route 184, Trout Run, turned himself in Thursday morning at the office of District Judge Jon E. Kemp to face assault-related charges.
Police allege the abuse occurred while Fields and the children’s mother, 19-year-old Breanna Long, were living last year on Brick Church Road in Clinton Township between April 1 and the middle of May.
“Fields did physically harm the child multiple times, causing him to suffer multiple injuries. He also failed to provide necessary care for the two children,” Switzer wrote in an affidavit.
The investigator said he learned Fields had a history of repeatedly picking up his children “by their arms forcibly,” and Long told police the father “punched one child so many times she can’t remember,” according to an affidavit.
Two of the couple’s children were brought to the UPMC Susquehanna Williamsport Regional Medical Center on May 21. One child, the 18-month-old boy, was transferred to Geisinger Medical Center in Danville to be treated for head and arm injuries.
“No doubt the injuries were from physical abuse,” a doctor told investigators. The abuse “most likely was repeated episodes of abuse, not just one instance,” the doctor said.
Medical tests clearly revealed not one, but “two different bleeds” that showed “head trauma,” the doctor told police, and the injuries likely occurred between “two weeks and three months.”
Switzer said he was told that at one time Fields grabbed the child and allegedly “threw him across the room,” resulting in the child’s head striking another person.
In his affidavit, Switzer said he learned the boy had suffered such severe head injuries that they made him “appear developmentally challenged and far behind where he should be.”
Fields has been “constantly negligent in his duties” as a parent and “constantly showed a lack of care and concern for his children, not just by his own actions, but by leaving his children with people he didn’t even known,” Switzer said.
Long told police that Fields, now living in Lock Haven, allegedly “physically abused her several times, that he was controlling and didn’t care for their children.”
The county’s Children and Youth Department, which initiated the investigation before police were involved, have removed the children permanently from the home.
Several weeks after the county agency took custody of the children, Fields and Long moved into Clarissa Guthrie’s home, no address provided.
In early July, Guthrie walked into the couple’s room and found Long drinking alcoholic beverages. She told Fields and Long “they would have to leave and couldn’t stay any longer,” Switzer said.
Fields then allegedly told her that he would “blow up the house if he came back,” the trooper added.
Following his arraignment on charges of aggravated and simple assault, recklessly endangering, terroristic threats, furnishing alcohol to a minor and harassment, Fields, already on probation in Clinton County, was committed to the Lycoming County Prison in lieu of $500,000 bail.