A dollar store clerk in Georgia could be slapped with an upgraded assault charge after she allegedly spanked an unruly 8-year-old boy with a belt around 25 times, according to reports.
Wrightsville Police Chief Paul Sterling said surveillance footage at the Dollar General showed Logan Ivey in a confrontation with 39-year-old Emilia Graciela Bell, according to CBS affiliate WMAZ-TV in Macon.
Logan was reportedly running around the store when he was stopped by the clerk.
“So I walked down this aisle and I seen the lady,” Logan told WMAZ on Sunday. “She started calling me a demon, so I said, ‘I’ll show you bad,’ and I picked up a cookie and I threw it at her.”
The boy described Bell chasing him around the store before she allegedly whacked him with a belt behind a counter.
“I felt like I had five needles sticking in me, then it really hurt,” Logan said. “I was screaming, Momma!'”
Bell was initially arrested Thursday on a simple battery charge, but that could be upgraded to aggravated assault, Sterling said.
“It wasn’t a spanking, it was more or less a beating than a spanking the way she was hitting him,” said the boy’s father, Jody Ivey, who had watched the footage. “I don’t know how to explain it and I don’t want to think about it.”
The boy’s mother and sister were in the store at the time, but didn’t witness the spanking, WMAZ reported.
The clerk and the store manager declined comment.
“It’s just heartbreaking (to) me that it happened two days before my birthday … I don’t like it,” Logan said.
