Fairchild airman and girlfriend ‘severely physically abused’ her 7-year-old son, court documents say

Editor’s note: This story includes graphic detail of alleged child abuse that readers may find disturbing.

A Fairchild Air Force Base active duty member and his girlfriend are accused of whipping, choking and starving the girlfriend’s 7-year-old son in Airway Heights.

Jared Reeves, 32, and Marie Collins, 29, were booked into the Spokane County Jail Wednesday on suspicion of child assault, criminal mistreatment and unlawful imprisonment charges, according to an Airway Heights police news release.

The child abuse investigation started in January when a Child Protective Services case worker brought the boy with bruising all over his body and extreme weight loss to Providence Sacred Heart Children’s Hospital, police said.

CPS got involved after receiving a report from a Sunset Elementary School counselor who was concerned the child had unexplained injuries to his face and a significant amount of weight loss since returning from winter break. The counselor reported the child was eating food and drinking milk from the garbage in the school, police said.

The boy told a CPS caseworker Reeves tried to kill him and that he would choke him to the point he couldn’t breathe, according to court documents.

A doctor wrote in documents the boy has been “severely physically abused” and expressed concern about “possible torture.”

“He is in imminent danger if he returns to his current living situation, he cannot sustain further injury without significant harm,” the doctor wrote. “He needs normal caloric intake for a sustained period of time to ensure he develops as normally as possible.”

Collins’ “mental stability and cognitive ability” are significant concerns, the doctor wrote. The physician said Collins experienced childhood trauma and repeated violent trauma the last seven years, and that the boy was exposed to trauma in all of his mother’s relationships leading up current one.

Collins told police she and Reeves have been dating since April, and she and her son moved in with Reeves in June, she said in court documents.

She told police she and Reeves spanked him, but many of the bruises were from falling and that he randomly breaks out in bruises.

As for the alleged withholding of food, Collins said they forgot about feeding him and that he didn’t eat at home for a two-week period.

She told police her son had to tell them when he wanted to eat, documents say. She said he had about 8 to 10 ounces of water per day during the two weeks without food.

Collins allegedly told investigators she hit the boy multiple times with a metal spoon to get him to stop crying. She said she recorded incidents of physical abuse on her phone.

One video of her son was recorded when he was about 3 years old with his hands and feet duct-taped together, showing her spanking him, court records show.

Collins allegedly told investigators she and Reeves forced the boy to strip naked and sleep in the bathtub without blankets or pillows over three weekends from December to January. They forced him to do this because he wet the bed, she said.

Investigators say Collins or Reeves would put the boy in the corner of his bedroom, and he would have to hold his hands above his head or out in front of himself for one to four hours at a time. If he dropped his arms, he would have to start over or he would be hit with a belt, metal spoon, hands or hairbrush.

The boy could be heard crying and screaming, “My back hurts,” on an audio file on Reeves’ phone, documents say.

Collins said her son was standing in the corner at the time with his arms out or up, causing him to cry and scream. Collins hit the boy multiple times with a metal spoon to get him to stop crying, she said.

Collins witnessed Reeves grab the boy by the back of the neck on multiple occasions to direct his head into a dog crate because he did not clean up feces and urine as instructed, investigators say. Reeves would berate the boy while holding his neck and forcing his head into the crate to view the feces he failed to clean properly.

Reeves told investigators he also struck the boy with a “sex paddle” and belt, which caused bruising to the boy’s genital area and buttocks. He said he also struck the boy with his hand or “popped him” in the mouth .

He also confessed to choking the boy and picking him up by his neck to the point his feet came off the ground, according to documents.

Police continue to investigate.

Reeves and Collins made their first appearances Thursday in Spokane County Superior Court and are scheduled for arraignments March 19. They remained in jail Thursday night.