“You don’t know what is in there,” Eunice Police Chief Kyle LeBouef tells PEOPLE. “There could be broken glass.”
A Louisiana woman has been arrested on accusations she tossed her 6-month-old son into a trash can when she got into a fight at Walmart.
Brionka Benjamin, 38, was arrested and charged with a misdemeanor simple battery charge and a felony count of cruelty to juveniles.
Officers were called to a “fight in progress” inside the Walmart in Eunice around 3:30 p.m. on Saturday, June 22. By the time officers arrived, the fight had ended. Officers reviewed the store’s video surveillance, which allegedly showed Benjamin throwing her son into the trashcan before hitting another person.
“It was a verbal altercation to begin with and it turned into a physical altercation,” Eunice Police Chief Kyle LeBouef tells PEOPLE. “We viewed the video surveillance and that is when we were able to determine what happened.”
Benjamin was holding her son when she got into the argument and then “suddenly turned and tossed the baby into the trashcan and started fighting with them,” he alleges.
LeBouef says the suspect allegedly tossed her son into the trash “so she could free both of her hands so she could fight.”
“You don’t know what is in there,” he says. “There could be broken glass.”
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The baby was not injured, he says.
He doesn’t know why the fight occurred. “We got different stories,” says LeBouef. “One said they didn’t like the way the other one looked at her and it just went from there.”
It’s not immediately clear if Benjamin has entered pleas or retained an attorney.
