Bristol man arrested on charges of child abuse

BRISTOL, Va. – A Bristol man got angry at his girlfriend’s 3-year-old daughter for not going to sleep so, police said, he grabbed her by the throat and held her down on a bed.

The child had a red bruise around her neck that Bristol Virginia Police Sgt. Steve Crawford said “looked like choke marks.”

On Nov. 4, Joshua Knight, 24, was charged with one count of child abuse and neglect. He was released the same day with a $1,000 bond.

According to the criminal complaint filed in Juvenile and Domestic Relations Court, the toddler told police and the Department of Social Services that
Knight “grabbed her by the neck because he was mad.”

The incident happened Nov. 2 at a dilapidated home in the 1400 block of Texas Avenue where the child had lived with her mother and Knight, her mother’s boyfriend, for several months. Neighbors said two more women, another man and at least five other children lived there, too.

The couple has two children together, but the 3-year-old girl is the mother’s from a previous relationship, Crawford said. Knight was alone, looking after the little girl, when the abuse allegedly occurred.

The house is vacant now, said neighbors, who requested anonymity because they feared retribution. The family was moving out when police came roaring down the street.

Crawford said Head Start called the Department of Social Services when they noticed the bruising on the child’s neck. But, they weren’t the only ones.

Neighbors said the “quiet little girl” was always coughing like she had a continuous respiratory infection, and when they noticed the bruising, they’d had enough. They asked the parents about the marks, who told them the girl suffered from a disease of some sort, and had, they said, coughed the bruises onto
her own neck.

The half-dozen children who lived in the home were a common sight in the neighborhood, neighbors said. A teenage boy likened them to pit-bulls, nice kids prone to meanness because “they didn’t learn how to act socially.”

Neighbors said the brood often played in the street and in other people’s yards unattended. The grown-ups at the home would scream at them occasionally and, once, pulled a kindergarten-aged boy inside by his neck, neighbors said.

The girl remained in the custody of her mother, who moved in with her own mother just blocks away.

No one answered the door there Tuesday, although the lights were on and Britney Spears’ “Womanizer” blared through the broken front door, accessible by a narrow path carved into mounds of old toys, overturned trash cans and discarded furniture.

In Virginia, child abuse is a Class 6 felony. If convicted, Knight could face up to five years in prison.

His next hearing is scheduled for Dec. 17 at 9:40 a.m. in Juvenile and Domestic Relations Court.

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