Three children were recently removed from their home due to filthy living conditions, and the father was arrested for cruelty, according to law enforcement.
Putnam County Primary School administrators called Eatonton Police Chief Howell Cardwell because a six-year-old had come to school shaking and with visible bruises on his arm.
Cardwell asked Officer Rebecca Meeks, who specializes in cases involving children, and Investigator Hargrove Jones to go to the school.
In her report, Meeks said the child told them that his father had spanked him that morning, and that it had happened before. Meeks saw bruises on the child’s right arm, shoulder blade area, and legs. When asked, the child told the officers his father had used a plastic Hot Wheels track to hit him.
Meeks, Jones, and Cardwell went to the child’s house on Martin Luther King Jr. Drive and asked the parents to step outside to talk to the child.
A Division of Family and Children Services (DFCS) case worker was called.
A check of the home by the case worker revealed “filthy conditions, dirty diapers on the floor, old food in the playpen and living room, several electrical outlets exposed, bedrooms dirty with poop smear, filthy kitchen with dirty dishes in the sink, a stove not in working order, dirty floors in every room, the entire home smelled unpleasant, and there were two younger children in the home both wearing dirty clothes,” … and “missing lightbulbs and broken windows” according to the incident reports by Meeks and Jones.
After being taken to Eatonton Police Department, the father, identified as A.J. Swain, reportedly said he had “grabbed a plastic tool that he could not really describe and folded it in half to mimic a belt,” and “proceeded to strike the child several times as a means of correction and discipline.”
Antoni Javan Swain, 28, of Martin Luther King Jr. Drive, was arrested on Jan. 21 on the charge of cruelty to children in the first degree – family violence.
The Hot Wheels track was retained as evidence, and “DFCS implemented a safety plan for all three children to stay with (other family members) for the time being until changes have been made,” Meeks wrote in her report.