Photo: Chase Steven Smith
A Mountain Home man charged with hitting his 6-year-old son during an altercation with the boy’s mother and the man’s girlfriend changed his plea to no contest in Baxter County Circuit Court Thursday.
Twenty-eight-year-old Chase Steven Smith, who was charged with second degree domestic battery, was sentenced to three years probation.
Smith was arrested April 8 after a Mountain Home Police Department (MHPD) officer responded to a 2 a.m. report of a domestic altercation between an adult male and female.
Smith and the woman were reported to have been in a relationship for a number of years. According to records in the Domestic Relations Division of Baxter County Circuit Court, Smith is the biological father of the two small children living in the home.
When police questioned the female about the altercation, she told officers in addition to the fight between the two adults, Smith had also hit their son. The child was reported to have told the officer his father had hit and choked him.
The MHPD officer said he saw no signs of choking, but did report the boy “had a severely swollen right eye and what appeared to be a laceration below the eye and a mark on his nose.” Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Kerry Chism said the small boy first said, “My daddy hit me, but has now changed his mind and says he fell down.” Chism said he was skeptical of the story about the fall, given the injuries the child suffered.
While the woman involved in the domestic altercation is not named in the police report, court records do show Smith and 33-year-old Amber Thode have filed for protective orders against each another from 2017 through this year.
Some were filed, dismissed and then refiled several times.
Thode filed for a protective order against Smith Nov. 3, 2017. It was dismissed three days later. Thode reopened the petition on Nov. 8, 2017, and it was dismissed in mid-December. It was reopened yet again on Jan. 22, 2018 and dropped a month later.
Smith filed a single petition against Thode on Nov. 3, 2017. It was dismissed four days later.
Chism said, while he was not in total agreement, the Arkansas Department of Human Services was involved in the case and “wanted this probation sentence to happen so the boy will have his father in his life.”
WebReadyTM Powered by WireReady® NSI