SWEETWATER, Texas (AP) — Police say a Texas man abandoned his 4-year-old son along a cactus-lined highway and that the injured boy spent several hours alone in the dark before a passing motorist picked him up.
Sweetwater police Chief Jim Kelley told the Abilene Reporter-News on Tuesday that Carlos Rico stopped his car along a highway near Sweetwater at about 3 a.m. Tuesday and "threw the boy out of the car like a bag of garbage,"
He says the boy was picked up by a passing motorist about three hours later and taken to a hospital, where doctors removed at least 500 cactus spines from the child's body.
Kelley says Rico told Saginaw police that God told made him do it.
Rico is charged with child endangerment and could face other charges.
