LAKE HAVASU — A Lake Havasu City woman was arrested last month for violence involving five children, four of them her own. A Lake Havasu City police department report indicates investigation began July 18 when officers were asked to assist Department of Children Services officials at a local residence.
Amanda Smith, 33, was arrested for two aggravated assault by strangulation counts and four charges of child abuse.
DCS was conducting an interview with Smith’s 9-year-old daughter when officers arrived. The girl indicated she was struck and strangled by her mother.
“Choked me and threw me out on the floor and then she hit me,” the girl said of her mother. “She used her hand and then choked me very hard where I had to cry.”
Smith reportedly told officers her daughter was running and playing and that she tried to calm her down since they live at another person’s home. She said the kids “constantly lie” and denied the abuse allegations, while contradicting herself.
“I’m not hitting them on a daily basis,” she told officers, according to the police report. And she admitted shaking the youngest victim, her nine-month- old son.
“If I shook him, it might’ve been for a quick second,” Smith reportedly said. She spoke of being stressed out and expressed frustration that nobody was helping her with the children.
The police report noted that Smith’s two and six-year-old sons were also harmed, as was another 8-year-old boy not her own, in violence that included punching and kicking over a nine month period ending in July.
Dave Hawkins
