State police charge woman with 2006 child abuse incident
State police said they served an arrest warrant from 2006 Tuesday on a 40-year-old woman who moved from Griswold to Florida with her children in the midst of a child abuse investigation.
Leslie A. Trickett, whose most recent address is in Meriden, was arrested in the parking lot of the Lisbon Walmart and charged with risk of injury to a minor and third-degree assault. She was released on a nonsurety bond and is scheduled to appear in court on July 6.
According to an arrest warrant written by Trooper Adam Chittick, a faculty member at Griswold Elementary school on Jan. 19, 2006, noticed a "sizable bruise" around the left eye of a 7-year-old student and told school administrators, who contacted the Department of Children and Families and state police. The girl also had bruising on her left forearm. The girl told the adults that her mother, Trickett, hit her in the face and struck her with a belt because she was "acting bad" and would not go to bed. She said her mother had struck her with a belt before, but only when she is "really bad," and that she and her sister sometimes hid from their mother when she got angry and put her "mean face" on.
Questioned by state police, Trickett said that her daughter suffered from bipolar disorder and sometimes became angry and unmanageable. She said that on the night in question, she slapped the victim in the mouth area of her face, not her eye, because she refused to go to bed, and that the girl must have been bruised from falling. She said also that she used a belt on the child's "butt" after the girl kicked her. She said she no longer hit the child with her hand, because "the child is like leather and it doesn't work anymore." She said she didn't use a belt on her other daughter because the girl was too young.
A day later, as police and DCF continued to investigate, Trickett went to the elementary school and picked up the children, saying she was taking them to Florida for a couple of weeks to visit her husband, who was working there. Police and DCF checked the family home several times but could not locate Trickett or the children. They obtained the arrest warrant and a court order to take the children into DCF custody if located anywhere in the nation and unsuccessfully attempted to locate them using phone and vehicle records.
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