Wanted for child cruelty, 25 year old Brandon Edward Jackson of Ringgold was arrested in Hamilton County.
Catoosa County Sheriff Gary Sisk says there was no question of his crimes.
"These were pretty obvious. We're not talking a hand print. We're talking black eye," Sisk says.
Officials say the child sustained injuries to the head and face, at the hands of his mother's boyfriend.
"It was his girlfriend's. He'd apparently been left alone with the child and then left. Then the grandmother noticed the injuries and alerted the mother who immediately brought the child to the sheriff's office," the Sheriff says.
But Ringgold Child Psychologist Dr. Dolcelyn Imperio-Smith says child cruelty isn't uncommon in the area.
"It seems like it should be happening, and it shouldn't be happening, but it happens," the doctor tells us.
And it happens, she says, most of the time, at the hands of relatives or close family friends...who prey on the vulnerable, then threaten kids to keep them quiet.
Dr. Imperio-Smith says "A lot of times the perpetrator, the person that's hurting the child, will tell them I'll kill your dad, your mom, your sisters."
For now, this perpertrator remains in custody in Tennessee.
Sheriff Sisk says they'll soon be extraditing him back to Georgia.
In Catoosa County, Brittany Shaw, WDEF News 12.
