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Man accused of abusing 1-year-old, 8-year-old

To get his 1-year-old son to stop crying, Luke E. Chilson yelled at him, picked up a pillow and put it over the toddler’s head and face, state police alleged.

When the child’s 8-year-old brother saw this, the youngster jumped on his father as he attempted to pull him off the 1-year-old, police were told.

Chilson, 30, punched the older boy in the stomach and then later locked him in a bedroom where he spent at least the next three days, police said.

It was just a day or two before Christmas, and Chilson allegedly did this while he had custody of the two boys in what was then his home at 528 Ruben Kehrer Road in Fairfield Township, police said.

When Chilson allegedly put the pillow over the child’s face, it caused bleeding in one of his eyes, police said.

Seeing the bleeding, the 8-year-old tried to comfort him, wiping the area around the eye with a paper towel, Trooper Rebecca Parker said in an affidavit.

The father “knew the eye was bleeding, but he did not seem to care because he did not talk to the child or do anything to help him,” Parker said investigators said.

Shortly after the toddler’s mother came to pick him up on Dec. 24, she saw blood in her son’s eye, Parker said. When the mother asked Chilson about what happened, he told her he didn’t know and that the toddler had “been rubbing it,” Parker said.

While the older son, who has a different mother, was locked in the bedroom for days, he was not able to use the bathroom, which caused medical problems that required him to be treated at a hospital after his holiday visitation with his father ended on Dec. 30, Parker said.

The county’s Children and Youth Department as well as the Child Advocacy Center in Sunbury took part in this case, Parker said.

Chilson, now living at 372 Taylor Hill Road, Hughesville, was arraigned Wednesday before District Judge Gary A. Whiteman on two counts each of aggravated assault, simple assault, endangering the welfare of a child and one count of recklessly endangering. He was committed to the Lycoming County Prison in lieu of $100,000 bail.

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