Marion County sheriff’s deputies arrested an Ocala man Thursday night after a 12-year-old boy reported a violent confrontation between the two.
The juvenile told deputies that 21-year-old Rolando Ricardo Rodney battered him recently after an argument broke out about turning off a kitchen light. The boy claimed Rodney “pushed him in the back of the head,” “punched him with a closed fist in the side” and “picked him up off the ground and dropped him from about waist to chest high,” a sheriff’s office report states.
Rodney claimed there was an altercation about dogs. He admitted to pushing the boy in the head and punching him and went so far as to conduct a closed-fist jab re-enactment, the report says.
Rodney was taken into custody and transported to the Marion County Jail, where he was charged with cruelty toward a child. He was released at 8:10 Friday on his own recognizance and is scheduled to appear in a Marion County courtroom Sept. 25 at 9 a.m.