A 22-year-old mother let some man throw her four-year-old from a railroad bridge into a Washington river on August 24th, and now they are being cited with reckless endangerment.
The mom claimed that the little boy thought it was fun, but the Department of Social and Healthy Services took him and another sibling into custody on Wednesday, August 31st, according to local station, KING-TV.
Swimmers frequent this area of the Wynoochee River, but witnesses in the water were horrified to see the little boy being thrown, and immediately called the police.
“He was screaming and crying, it was terrible,” swimmer Brianna Jones said.
Kaylub Fawley, who shot the video and posted it to Facebook, was equally upset by what he saw.
“As soon as he hit the water, my heart sank, I felt so bad, I didn’t know what to do."
I take issue with people throwing children into swimming pools, let alone from a bridge, so I can only imagine what these people thought.
Fawley said he was about to take a picture of his friend, when he noticed something weird happening on the bridge.
“I saw the little boy and I had a gut feeling, I was like alright I got to start recording this, and as soon as I started recording, he went off,” who himself called the police and handed over the video as evidence.
“Fawley told reporters that the mother "was trying to make it seem like the whole incident was fun.”
In the video below, people can be heard yelling at Jeremiah Goodwin, 35, man not to throw the boy from the bridge, and calling him every name in the book when he eventually did.
The boy landed in the water with a loud "fwap," similar to the sound made when someone does a belly flop.
Fortunately, he was unharmed when authorities checked him out.
According to the police report, Goodwin was a local who had just met the mom and son, and wanted to help the little boy "safely" get off the bridge.
Goodwin, authorities believe, was under the influence of alcohol at the time of questioning.
"The mother initially told deputies that she had lost sight of her son and then all of the sudden, noticed an adult male throw her son from the bridge," the police report states.
"She eventually stated that her child had kept asking her to jump off of the bridge however she continued to tell him no.
"Shortly thereafter, a man she had just met at the river had her son on the bridge and said he was going to throw her son off of the bridge.
"The mother claimed it was at this point that she agreed to it and swam out into the water. The man then threw her son into the river and the mother retrieved him."
Goodwin and the mom have not been arrested, but the man was also cited for trespassing on the bridge.
