A Texas family is outraged after the arrest of 17-year-old Peter Brown, a teen with a mental disability which causes him to have the mindset of a child. However, police aren’t treating him like a kid, let alone a teenager, and the family is outraged.
Peter was snatched from his special education class by Brazosport Independent School District police last week for the events that occurred at the end of March. He was jailed and charged for one count of assault of a public servant other than a peace officer or judge.
While they were offered little to no specifications as to what he was arrested for, Peter’s parents tell ABC 13 they discovered he may have assaulted a teacher in the midst of a mental health crisis.
This theory was further supported by a Brazosport ISD spokesperson who told the DailyMail the Brazoria County grand jury indicted the student for “assault of a staff member.” Also, the Browns told ABC Peter regularly got in trouble at school and makes frequent visits to inpatient mental health facilities every few months.
However, the Browns say all of this is due to his mental disability, which causes him to have the mind of a 12- or 13-year-old.
“He’s 17 with a low IQ, and a disability not knowing what type of trouble he’s in, not knowing where he’s at, not knowing what the judge was telling him,” said Brandon Brown, Peter’s father, via ABC. “You know, he just has that mental problem and the doctors always said that he is going to be, you know, have violent tendencies. We’ve been working on that with him for all of his life.”
For this reason, his parents told reporters they don’t believe Peter should be charged as an adult. Due to the nature of his charges, the report says Peter’s family have struggled to get information on his case. Peter’s bond was also placed at $100,000, an amount too high for his parents to afford, per the report.
The Browns said that while they don’t believe their son should go unpunished, they don’t believe their son should be treated like an adult criminal - nor should he be held behind bars while needing his parents’ care.
“He’s not a criminal at all. He don’t know the first thing about doing anything criminal,” said Mr. Brown.