Palm Coast Man Charged With Felony Child Abuse For Allegedly Knocking 6-Year-Old Girl to Ground

Sunday evening Flagler County Sheriff’s deputies got a report of a domestic disturbance at 18 Rosecroft Lane in palm Coast. When they got there, they saw a man in the house holding a butter knife and feared “he may be doing something with it,” according to an arrest report. When they knocked on the door, “several small children came to the door crying and saying they were scared.”

Richard Kenney, 33, was arrested after briefly resisting deputies, and charged with a felony count of child abuse and domestic battery after deputies learned he had allegedly slugged a 6-year-old girl hard enough to knock her to the floor, then slapping his wife or ex-wife. (Court records indicate that earlier this year she petitioned the court for child support from Kenney.)

The 36-year-old mother to the children in the house reported to deputies that Kenney had come home drunk, then asked her and three daughters to come into the room where he was, placing two girls on one side and their mother and the 6-year-old child on the other. He then told the 6-year-old girl, “Sorry I have to use you.” According to his arrest report, he then “struck her so hard with his right hand on the left side of her face that she was thrown to the floor.” The girl had “noticeable redness and swelling on the right side of her face,” the arrest report states.

Kenney and his wife then argued about what he’d just done. The woman kept telling him to leave. He kept refusing. He tried to lock the door to their shared bedroom but she stopped him. He then allegedly slapped her.

Even after deputies arrived at the house Kenney kept yelling at his wife in front of the house. A deputy tried separating them, but Kenney “was very argumentative, refused to calm down and had to be escorted away from the front door.” By then he’d been handcuffed and asked to sit down to calm down. He refused, saying he wouldn’t sit down until the handcuffs were removed. He was ordered to comply and threatened with an additional charge if he did not—resisting arrest, which was eventually added to his two other charges—but was finally forced to sit.

He was then taken to the county jail and booked at 10:30 p.m.

The third-degree child-abuse felony charge he faces—though it is child abuse “without causing great bodily harm”—is defined in law as committing malicious abuse “wrongfully, intentionally, and without legal justification or excuse. Maliciousness may be established by circumstances from which one could conclude that a reasonable parent would not have engaged in the damaging acts toward the child for any valid reason and that the primary purpose of the acts was to cause the victim unjustifiable pain or injury.”

He bonded out this morning.

In 2010 Kenney was charged with domestic battery and other charges, pleaded to battery and was sentenced to probation. He subsequently attempted to have the record sealed but was denied, likely because of his previous record: He was charged with grand theft, a second-degree felony, in 2004. The charge was dropped. In 2013, he was charged with disorderly conduct, a misdemeanor. That charge was dropped. He was also the subject of an injunction in 2009.