Police were called in by a school resource officer after two juveniles alleged their mother’s boyfriend touched them on their legs with a hot salad fork.

Tyler James McCoy, 25, was arrested by Sgt. Logan Hobbs of the Linton Police Department last Thursday afternoon, September 19. McCoy’s home address is in Carlisle according to both jail and court records but in a probable cause affidavit, he is referred to as the live-in boyfriend of a woman who lives in Linton.

Sgt. Hobbs, the investigating officer, was dispatched to Linton-Stockton Elementary School last Thursday to speak to School Resource Officer Josh Goodman about a possible battery on a juvenile. Sgt. Hobbs then talked to two juveniles and reported they told him they had been touched by McCoy, their mother’s boyfriend, with a hot fork. Hobbs reported they described it as a big salad fork and they said McCoy was cooking dinner when he touched them on their legs with the fork. One said McCoy had heated the fork on the stove, they both said the fork was hot.

Sgt. Hobbs noted that although he photographed locations on one juvenile’s legs where he was allegedly touched by the fork, he did not locate a distinct injury. But on the other juvenile, Hobbs wrote that the juvenile had a mark of three even lines that appeared to be consistent with the description of the salad fork and this injury was also photographed.

Personnel from the Department of Child Services (DCS) also took part in interviews.

When McCoy was interviewed at the police department, he allegedly said he barely tapped both juveniles with the fork which had been sitting on the stove and wasn’t hardly hot, and that they did not appear to be harmed. Sgt. Hobbs reported that after further questioning, McCoy admitted to knowing the fork was hot, that he held it on one of the juveniles for two seconds. He allegedly denied heating the fork with a burner but said the fork was hot because it was laying on the hot stove while he was cooking. Sgt. Hobbs said McCoy denied knowing that touching the children with the hot fork from the stove would hurt them.

McCoy was then taken into custody and booked into the Greene County Jail around 3:13 p.m. His bond was set at $10,000 surety with ten percent cash allowed. He posted $1,000 and was released on Friday, September 20.

This Monday, September 23, Greene County Prosecutor Jarrod Holtsclaw filed a criminal case against McCoy in Greene Circuit Court.

McCoy is scheduled to appear for his initial hearing tomorrow morning, Friday, September 26, to be formally charged with:

• Domestic battery with bodily injury to a person under the age of 14, a Level 5 felony, and

• Domestic battery committed in the presence of a child less than 16 years old, a Level 6 felony.