Dalin Webb, a Phoenix police lieutenant who works with teens, admitted to Mesa police on Sunday that he may have choked his teenage son during a domestic dispute.
Webb, 41, was booked into the Maricopa County Jail on suspicion of aggravated assault-impeded breathing, a felony, and misdemeanor disorderly conduct-fighting.
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Making this case even more egregious: Webb is a police supervisor in the Mountain View precinct who once oversaw the Phoenix School Resource Officer Program.
The father-and-son fight at the Webbs' Mesa home on Sunday started off with a lot of yelling, a booking sheet shows. When the 17-year-old boy's mom came into a bedroom to find out what the "commotion" was about, his dad gave her a good shove out the door, causing her leg to buckle, the boy told police.
The teen "cursed" at his father for pushing his mom. Webb threw him on a bed and pinned him down. Webb choked him by placing two hands around his neck, limiting his breathing, the teen reported.
The mother (we assume it's Webb's wife, but her name wasn't given in the probable-cause statement) came back into the room, saw what was going on, and heard her son's voice sounding "restricted." She screamed for Webb to "stop it!" and he released his son.
Webb told the officer "he did not recall having his hands wrapped around the [teen's] neck and restricting his breathing but stated that if [the teen's mother] saw that, that he may have done it, as she had a better angle to see what he was doing . . ."
Fortunately for the victim, the Maricopa County Attorneys Office has a new program to collect evidence in alleged strangulation cases. A forensic nurse was dispatched to examine the boy's throat and neck. She noted the boy's neck displayed "petechial hemorrhaging" (a fancy name for red or purple spots from broken capillaries), which backed up the claims of the teen and his mom.
Webb's in a peck of trouble, both at home and at work. But if he can get that felony bumped down to a misdemeanor, he might not lose his job. Last month, Valley Fever reported a case in which a Maricopa County Sheriff's Deputy was convicted of misdemeanor assault after an unprovoked attack on a FedEx worker, yet remains on patrol.
