A Texas mother is accused of tying her son to a seatbelt and then dragging him down a highway as punishment for insulting her, KFDX-TV reports.
On May 2, authorities arrested 61-year-old Marion Luise Stade in connection with the allegations, which reportedly occurred earlier in the day.
The situation began when someone called the Archer County Sheriff’s Office claiming to have seen a woman dragging a child from the back of a vehicle on Highway 79 South.
A sheriff’s deputy located and stopped the vehicle. The driver, whom the deputy identified as Stade, said that her son had called her an insulting name, so she pulled over and “was waiting on the child to apologize,” according to court documents obtained by the Forth Worth Star-Telegram.
Stade allegedly denied that she had dragged the boy, whose age has not been released publicly, and so the deputy directed the child to apologize, cleared the call and let the woman go.
However, a short while later, Archer County Sheriff Jack Curd called the deputy and said he had just received a text message from a witness that included video allegedly showing the child forced to run alongside the vehicle with a seatbelt wrapped around him. The video reportedly showed Stade speeding up and stopping abruptly multiple times, with the boy at one point grasping onto the vehicle while his feet were off the ground.
The deputy pulled Stade over again and asked her about the video. She allegedly replied that her son wouldn’t get out of the road and that she needed to control him, according to the newspaper. The deputy collected more information, released Stade again, and cleared the call.
Deputies later that day located Stade a third time and arrested her. She has been charged with one count of abandoning or endangering a child and was released after posting a $100,000 surety bond, according to KFDX-TV.
Authorities allege that Stade “placed the child in imminent danger of death or serious bodily injury,” the court documents read, according to the newspaper.
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[Feature Photo: Marion Luise Stade/Wichita County Sheriff’s Office]
