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A Chandler dad who burned his 5-year-old son with a cigarette lighter because he thought the boy was possessed was in Maricopa County Superior Court this morning where he pleaded guilty to child abuse.
Johnny Salazar, 25, was arrested in July after he admitted to relatives that he’d burned the boy for touching his bible.
After church one Sunday, the boy’s grandparents noticed a burn on his hand. They asked Salazar what happened, which is when he made his startling admission.
“He thought my grandson, by touching (the Bible), was causing power to come out of it,” his mother, Connie Salazar, told a local TV station.
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Connie Salazar also says her son was under the influence of bath salts, a designer drug that often causes people to trip out, at the time.
“He was hallucinating that he was seeing demons and spirits and stuff,” Salazar told the Arizona Republic at the time of her son’s arrest.
According to police, Salazar was talking gibberish and making absolutely no sense at the time of his arrest
Salazar apparently had recently broken up with his baby-mama. His mother claims he turned to bath salts to cope with the stress of the breakup, which led to him burning his own son.
Salazar’s sentencing is scheduled for October 25.
