The father of a teenager accused of trying to eat glass from a window he smashed while allegedly using LSD says the police are “dead wrong” about what happened that night.
The man, who declined to provide his name, said his 16-year-old son did not use drugs that night. He said his son had gone to the house to get help after he was injured during an altercation with another teenager.
Bath Township police, who were first to arrive on scene even though the incident occurred just over the Medina County line in Granger Township, reported officers were called just past midnight on Saturday after the half-naked Revere High School student broke a window of a home on Medina Line Road. Police captured the scene on body cameras and reported the teenager was incoherent and aggressive on scene.
“The police don’t know what happened,” the boy’s father said on Wednesday. “All he wanted was help.”
The man said his son had been dragged down a nearby road by another teenager’s car. The two teens had fought, the man said, and the other teenager smashed his son’s hand in a car door before driving away. The boy was dragged along the road, losing his pants in the process, the man said.
He said his son, soaked in his own blood, trudged through a nearby patch of woods to the nearest source of light — the house on Medina Line Road where police were called. His son smashed a window accidentally while in a panic, he said.
“He wasn’t taking LSD and he never ate any glass,” the man said. “He doesn’t have any lacerations on his face or anything. He was released from the hospital that night, and they said he didn’t have any drugs in his system.”
The woman who lives at the Medina Line Road house told the Beacon Journal on Thursday that the father’s story was all wrong.
“We could tell right away that he was out of sorts,” she said.
She and her husband, who are in their 50s, called police after they heard glass shattering. They went into their home’s living space and found the teenager covered in his own blood. The couple had left the door unlocked because they felt safe in their neighborhood, she said.
“It was at least 10 minutes of pure horror. I’m sitting here shaking just talking about it,” she said. “He was inside our home. I can live with some vandalism outside, but when we saw him in that state in our home, we didn’t know what was happening. We didn’t know what he was going to do or if there were more people like him outside.”
She said the teen told her he had used LSD, and she added the boy never said the word “help” during the entire encounter. She was unsure if the boy ate glass.
Her husband forced the boy outside onto the porch while she was on the phone with police, and that’s when he smashed through the front window.
“He fooled around, saying crazy stuff, and then he busted both arms through a window on our front porch,” she said. “I thought he was going to come through with that kind of strength and that kind of craziness, so I put a shelf in front of the window and held it closed so he couldn’t get through.”
Police arrived shortly afterward. She said the boy had smashed windows on other buildings on their property before coming inside, and there was so much blood inside — on carpets, couches, books and throw pillows — that it took 22 hours of hazardous materials cleaning to remove.
Police said body camera videos, which could not be obtained by the Beacon Journal on Wednesday, also showed the boy admitted to taking LSD.
On Wednesday, police Chief Michael McNeely said the father’s account was the first time he’d heard another story to explain what happened that night.
“We don’t have any motive to say anything untrue,” McNeely said. “I can’t speak to his story, but that’s not what we saw on body cameras and what my officers reported.”
The Medina County Sheriff’s Office, which is handling the case, reported on Wednesday that the case was still under investigation.
Nick Glunt can be reached at 330-996-3565 or nglunt@thebeaconjournal.com. Follow him on Twitter @NickGluntABJ.