Utah mom arrested after kicking 8-year-old out of house for not being 'team player,' police say

A woman already facing a child abuse charge for an incident with her teen daughter has been arrested again for allegedly kicking her 8-year-old son out of the house.

A woman already facing a child abuse charge for an incident with her teen daughter has been arrested again for allegedly kicking her 8-year-old son out of the house. (Stefano Ember, Shutterstock)


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KEY TAKEAWAYS
  • Barbara Susan Williford, 48, was arrested in Uintah County for investigation of aggravated child abuse.
  • She allegedly kicked her 8-year-old son out for not being a "team player."
  • The boy was found shoeless in 40-degree weather by Bureau of Indian Affairs officers.

FORT DUCHESNE, Uintah County — A woman was arrested Wednesday night after police say she kicked her young son out of the house for not being a team player.

Barbara Susan Williford, 48, of Roosevelt, was booked into the Uintah County Jail for investigation of aggravated child abuse.

Williford is already facing a charge of aggravated child abuse in 8th District Court accusing her of putting Borax, a household cleaner, in her 14-year-old daughter's water.

A sheriff's deputy was called to the Fort Duchesne area after officers with the Bureau of Indian Affairs located an 8-year-old boy walking in the middle of the road. The boy told police he had been kicked out of his home, according to a police booking affidavit.

"The 8-year-old juvenile informed me that he had been in an argument with his mother over time on his electronics and bedtime. The juvenile stated that he had been on the electronics and was asked to get off of them and go to bed. The juvenile stated he and his mother then continued arguing and his mother grabbed him by his hair and threw him outside, where he was told that he could not live at the residence anymore," the affidavit alleges.

Officers then questioned Williford, who said that the boy "had anger issues and had been on his electronics for too long. Barbara stated she asked the juvenile to get off his electronics and help with chores," according to the affidavit.

Williford claimed she sent the boy to his room for a "time out" for four minutes. But when four minutes were up, he again asked for his electronics and began arguing again. At that point, she grabbed the boy and threw him out, the affidavit says.

"I then asked Barbara about telling him that he was not allowed at the residence and she stated that she told the juvenile that if he was not going to be a team player, he was not allowed to live there," the affidavit states.

Police say it was about 40 degrees and dark at the time and the boy was not wearing any shoes and had a jacket that appeared to be too small.

The Key Takeaways for this article were generated with the assistance of large language models and reviewed by our editorial team. The article, itself, is solely human-written.

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Pat Reavy, KSLPat Reavy
Pat Reavy interned with KSL in 1989 and has been a full-time journalist for either KSL or Deseret News since 1991. For the past 25 years, he has worked primarily the cops and courts beat.
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