West Newton man charged with assaulting 1-year-old boy
A West Newton man was jailed on a $100,000 bond after being charged with assaulting a 1-year-old boy.
State police charged Salvatore Albert Salvio, 24, after his girlfriend reported coming home from work Thursday to find her son’s face bruised, swollen and bleeding. The child also had four puncture marks on the bottom of his right foot and nine on the bottom of his left foot. Police said the punctures may have been caused by a syringe, as the boy’s mother told authorities Salvio uses heroin.
Salvio was watching the boy, police said.
When the child’s mother came home, Salvio told her the boy was sleeping, but she found her son crying in his bedroom, according to court paperwork. Police said when the woman questioned Salvio about her son’s injuries, he denied hurting the child and said he did not know what had happened to him.
According to the affidavit of probable cause, when the woman tried to leave with the boy, Salvio threatened to knock her out. The woman took her son to a neighbor’s home and called 911, police said, and Salvio fled in the woman’s vehicle.
Salvio turned himself in on Saturday, and was arraigned by on-call Westmoreland County Magisterial District Judge Christian Flanigan.
He is lodged in the Westmoreland County Prison with a preliminary hearing scheduled before Magisterial District Judge Charles Christner at 10 a.m. Sept. 23.