By Micah Choquette
Two Sapulpans have been arrested on child abuse and neglect charges after graphic details emerge about how they were treating a boy living in their home, who was reportedly 11 years old but weighed just 58 pounds.
The boy’s mother, 35-year-old Stephanie Day Fenton, and his stepfather, 37-year-old Shawn Thomas Deatherage, were arrested last week after police found the boy hiding behind a dumpster at a local gas station. The boy had reportedly run away from home. Officer Mike Sole confirmed that the boy was very hungry and that “he was at the dumpster looking for food.”
The arrest report details the living environment of the boy, who told investigators he was being made to sleep in a closet, and was only permitted to urinate in a 2-liter bottle. The boy was able to break out of the closet and push out the screen of a bedroom, escaping to where police later found him.
The boy was found with over a dozen injuries to his body, including bruising, a black eye, cigarette burns, and what the boy later admitted were self-mutilation wounds from forks and steak knives.
Police found Fenton when the woman came into the police department to file a missing person’s report. According to the arrest report, Fenton said she’d gone into his room at 7:00 am to get the boy ready for school. She says she’d last seen him the previous night at 11:00 pm when she “gave him a can of tuna.”
A district representative with Sapulpa Public Schools says that the boy was not enrolled in the school district.
After police informed Fenton that her son had been taken to St. Francis hospital and was in DHS custody, she began to talk with police about the injuries that the boy had sustained. As she was shown photos by police, she recalled some of the injuries, saying that the boy had injured himself by throwing fits or rubbing his arms on the carpet, generating carpet burns.
When police asked Fenton about the boy’s weight, she replied that he was skinny because “everyone in [our] family is very skinny.” She admitted to portioning the boy’s meals, saying that she usually fills his bowl “approximately one inch from the bottom,” and she “mentioned that she may have been portioning his meals wrong,” according to the arrest report.
As police showed Fenton photos of the boy’s significantly bruised face, she began to hyperventilate and was “attempting to cry with no tears,” according to the report.
An investigation of the home where the boy was living on South Bixby Street turned up additional evidence of neglect, such as possible surveillance equipment, and doorknobs being removed from doors.
Deatherage and Fenton have a hearing scheduled for Tuesday, May 30th. They are charged with 1 count each of causing injury to a child, and 1 count of child neglect.
