Gainesville Police arrested a man Sunday after he threw a fan at his teenage son for not looking enough like him.
Alexander Arroyo, 36, of Gainesville, was arrested on charges of child abuse and violation of a domestic violence injunction issued in 2009, according to an arrest report.
Just after 7 p.m., while arguing with his 14-year-old son, Arroyo threw a 4-foot fan at him. The boy dodged the fan, which struck a wall and broke into pieces, the report said.
Arroyo first told police there had been no argument. He then said they were arguing because Arroyo was angry his son didn’t look enough like him and added that he threw the fan to the side, not at the boy, according to the report.
Arroyo’s wife told police she fled from the family home in Brooklyn, N.Y., earlier this year because of Arroyo’s violence, wrote GPD spokesman Officer Ben Tobias in an email. She also obtained the injunction, which bans Arroyo from contacting her or their five children.
Arroyo tracked down the family and had been living on and off with them for the last few months, according to the report. The wife told police she didn’t evict her husband out of fear. Arroyo told police he knew about the injunction but thought it had expired. It expires in October 2014.
Officers booked Arroyo into jail at about 9 p.m., where he remained Monday night with a $75,000 bond.
A version of this story ran on page 3 on 8/27/2013 under the headline "Man throws fan at son"
