Iowa mother facing charges after being caught on camera abusing son at gas station

DES MOINES, Iowa (KCCI) - A mother in Des Moines was arrested after abusing her son at a gas station.

Bystanders stepped in to help the boy. The shocking abuse was caught on camera.

In the video, a 9-year-old boy with autism is heard screaming for help inside a Quick Trip on Sunday, as his mother picks him up by the arms and throws him face first on the ground.

Michael Lomax and his fiancé, Arkeya Quinn, were inside the store at the time.

“The child is screaming for his life,” Lomax said. “I’m like unhand him! Let him go! I think I might have grabbed her or something to get her off of him.”

The two intervened when they heard the child’s screams.

“She like threw him down, and he smacked his face, and that’s when I came in, and I pushed her, like get off of him. You don’t do that to a child,” Quinn said.

A second video shows the woman try to leave, but stopping to turn around and punch Quinn in the back of the head.

“She was screaming, yelling, throwing property prior to our arrival,” Des Moines police Sgt. Paul Parizek said. “Once we were able to get her in custody and calmed down a little bit, what we learned was that prior to our arrival, she had actually assaulted her child twice.”

The woman, identified as Rejanie Morris, is now charged with child endangerment and two counts of assault, for putting her hands on Lomax and Quinn.

The couple says they stayed with the boy until things finally calmed down.

“When he was in the back of the police car, he was out playing with all the kids, and it was like you could see a whole different person,” Quinn said. “You could see his spirit just lift up. He was happy. He was enjoying himself. It’s like he wasn’t fearing anything anymore because she just wasn’t there.”

Police said the child is doing well and is in the care of DHS.