Man beats 3-year-old’s stepdad, pours bleach on him and kidnaps child, TN cops say
A 19-year-old armed with a toilet plunger beat another man nearly to death, dumped bleach on him and kidnapped the man’s 3-year-old stepdaughter, Tennessee authorities said.
Charles Coffman was found in the victim’s stolen car with the missing toddler and is now charged with attempted second-degree murder, aggravated kidnapping, tampering with evidence and theft, according to police and Knox County records.
Coffman’s mother and the victim of the assault are the legal guardians of the 3-year-old girl, the Knoxville Police Department said.
Police got a call for a welfare check on June 22 from a woman who said Coffman may have killed a man and kidnapped a toddler from a Knoxville home, according to an affidavit of complaint.
Police said they forced their way inside the home and found a man bound, naked and suffering from a head injury on the bathroom floor. An officer “noted a strong smell of bleach,” police wrote in the affidavit.
The man was hospitalized with internal bleeding in his skull and other injuries, officers said.
Investigators realized the man’s SUV was missing as well and put out an alert for it until another police department found the stolen car, Knoxville police said.
Law enforcement chased the SUV and laid down spike strips until they were able to stop the car containing Coffman, his 21-year-old girlfriend and the 3-year-old, police said.
When investigators interviewed Coffman, he told them he and his girlfriend took an Uber to the stepdad’s neighborhood because his mother, the toddler’s other legal guardian, asked him to pick up the child while she was in jail, police said.
Coffman went to the home and got into a physical altercation with the child’s stepdad, according to officers. Coffman told officers he slammed the man on the ground, punched him in the face, beat him with a toilet plunger, then stuffed the plunger in the man’s mouth, according to police.
He said he dragged the man into the bathroom, took his clothes off and poured bleach on him, all while the child was at the home, police said.
Coffman’s girlfriend told police when she went into the home herself, she found the stepdad on the floor of the living room, according to officers. Coffman brought her the toddler, then they stole the SUV and fled, police said.
She told investigators she overheard her boyfriend tell someone on the phone that he thought he killed the child’s stepdad and “didn’t know if the victim was alive or dead,” police wrote in the affidavit.
When investigators spoke with Coffman’s mom from jail, she said she didn’t give her son permission to take the child and she would never let him have custody of the girl, according to the report.
Coffman also told officers his mom let him take the SUV, which she also denied, saying she hadn’t spoken to her son at all while she was in jail, police said.
The 3-year-old was taken to a hospital for evaluation, and Coffman wrote an apology to her stepdad, according to officers.
Records don’t show charges filed against Coffman’s girlfriend.