By FARRAH JOHNSON
Tribune Staff Reporter
fjohnson@tribunemedia.net
A MAN slapped a 10-year-old boy before wielding a cutlass at the youngster’s mother, a court was told.
Prosecutors allege Travalae Andrews assaulted the mother-son duo in April.
He denied the allegations when he first appeared before Senior Magistrate Derence Rolle Davis and the case was adjourned for trial.
When the 10-year-old gave evidence, he said he was outside playing basketball with his friends when Andrews “pulled up” in a car playing loud music. The boy said sometime later, Andrews pushed him up to a wall and “slapped him up.”
“I asked him if I was his child and he told me he is a big man and I am a child,” he told the court. “When I left to tell my grammy, he bust me in my back with a rock in front of our house.”
The boy said after his grandmother informed his mother of the incident, she confronted Andrews to ask him “why he hit her child.” Still, the boy said Andrews was hostile when his mother went up to him and “tried to chap her with a cutlass.”
When the youngster’s mother took the stand, she said on the day in question, she was heading home when she received a call from her mother telling her that Andrews had slapped and punched her son.
“I told him he is a grown man and my son is a child so if there was a problem he should’ve come to me so I could deal with it,” she said. “But then he pushed me, got his cutlass out of his trunk and started swinging it and saying: ‘I ain’t scared to go to jail because I been there before.’”
The woman said she was about two-feet away from Andrews when he wielded the cutlass while making the threats. She said his actions made her fear for her and her son’s safety, so she went to the police station and reported the matter.
During the hearing, Andrews was not represented by an attorney. As a result, Magistrate Rolle Davis adjourned the matter to give him an opportunity to seek legal representation.
The case continues October 19.
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