Scott Hicks of Wetumpka, Alabama, traveled down to Bay County, Florida, in September after two failure-to-appear arrest warrants were issued against him on battery charges. According to the Montgomery Advertiser, Hicks told the bailiff he needed to get the issue handled quickly because he had left an “8-year-old child” in the car.
Sheriff’s deputies went out to Hicks’s car, but initially did not see a child inside. Then, to their horror, they realized a small child’s legs were sticking out from underneath a blanket in the back seat. Once inside the car, the deputies found an unresponsive 4-year-old “with eyes open, dried blood on his lips and a laceration to the head.” Next to the child, who they estimated had been left in the car for approximately 90 minutes with the windows up, was a brown paper bag full of handguns.
The young boy — the son of Hicks’s girlfriend, Hallee McLeod — was severely dehydrated and taken to a local hospital for treatment, at which point the full extent of his injuries became known. He was found to have “extensive and severe bruising” all over his body, particularly on and around his genitals.
McLeod arrived at the hospital that afternoon and admitted that she and Hicks had caused the injuries.
“She told us what she and Hicks would do to the child,” said Wetumpka Sheriff Bill Franklin, who called it the most “disturbing” case of child abuse he’d ever seen. “They would throw the child on the floor and kick him between his legs. She allowed this to happen, it’s sickening.”
“To think that knowledgeable, thinking adults could do something like this to a child is just beyond me,” he continued. “What this 4-year-old boy experienced is torture, there’s just no other word for it.”
Hicks and McLeod now face aggravated child abuse charges and McLeod also faces one count of chemical endangerment of a child, the result of keeping methamphetamine around her son.
Under current Alabama law, Aggravated Child Abuse is a Class B felony punishable by 2 to 20 years in prison, but one local district attorney says the Hicks and McLeod case has compelled him to push for much stiffer penalties.
Randall Houston, the District Attorney for the 19th Judicial Circuit, which includes Autauga, Chilton and Elmore Counties, will push the Alabama legislature to elevate the crime to a Class A felony punishable by 10 to 99 years, or life, in prison in cases involving a child younger than six-years-old. By elevating the punishment, the crime would be raised to the same level as Attempted Murder charges.
“I stood in court last week to oppose a bond request made by a mother who, along with her boyfriend, heinously abused her four-year-old son to the point that he was near death,” Houston said of the Hicks and McLeod case. “As I looked that defendant in the eye and thought of the ways she and her boyfriend had abused her own son, I realized that the current penalties for such monstrous acts are inadequate and must be toughened so those who commit them can stare at the four cold walls of a prison cell for the rest of their lives.”
Alabama Senator Cam Ward (R-Alabaster), who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee, told Yellowhammer Monday morning he believes District Attorney Houston’s push will be well received by his colleagues in the legislature.
“Many states do this already,” said Ward. “I think he will receive a very favorable reception to this proposal. He may not get a life sentence he is looking for but easily could get the criminal punishment enhanced. I think the Senate Judiciary Committee would pass it out without any dissent.”
The Alabama legislature will reconvene for its 2016 Regular Session in February.
