JACKSON, MI – After side-swiping one tree, hitting another head-on and assaulting a man who lived nearby, Jeffery Salyers grabbed his 3-year-old son by the collar and the pants and pushed him through a shattered window, Stuart Kelley said.

“It was very disturbing to see the kid thrown through the window,” Kelley, a neighbor who witnessed the events, testified Thursday, May 8, at Salyers' preliminary examination, a probable cause hearing, before Jackson County District Judge R. Darryl Mazur.

Mazur found there was sufficient evidence to send Salyers’ case to circuit court.

Salyers, 53, is charged with third-degree child abuse, a felony, and three misdemeanors, including failing to stop at the scene of an accident resulting in injury, drunken driving with an occupant younger than 16 and an assault offense for allegedly hitting Terry Rose, who lived near the scene of the crash and called 911.

Acting on a request by Assistant Prosecutor Molly Burns, Mazur agreed to enhance the assault charge to aggravated assault, punishable by no more than a year and a fine.

Rose, who sought medical treatment the following day, said he has lingering problems with his shoulder as a result of Salyers’ actions. His use of it is limited.

He said he was on his computer April 13 in the basement of his home when Salyers started knocking on the door. He asked Rose for scrap metal, and when Rose did not give him any, Salyers became upset. He acted “like he went crazy,” Rose said.

Salyers tried to leave Rose’s house and hit the trees with the GMC Jimmy he was driving. He got out of the vehicle and so did the child, who was bleeding from the head, Rose said. The boy “was crying and scared.”

Rose tried to separate Salyers from the boy and Salyers struck Rose, sending him to the ground.

Kelley said Salyers was visibly angry at Rose and Kelley at first thought the two were involved in a “family dispute.” Rose, however, said he had never before seen Salyers.

Kelley said when the child got out of the SUV, Salyers’ attention was diverted from Rose to the boy and he threw his son into the vehicle and “peeled out,” going down the driveway and onto Lansing Avenue, where police quickly stopped him.

Blackman-Leoni Township Public Safety Officer Martin Jordon said Salyers’ speech was slurred, his eyes were bloodshot and he smelled of “intoxicants.”

A blood test revealed he had a blood-alcohol level of 0.139 percent, Jordon said.

He willingly took a preliminary breath test and a blood test at Allegiance Health, Jordon said, answering questions posed by Jennifer Lamp, Salyers’ lawyer.

Agreeing with Lamp, Jordon said Salyers continued to express concern about the wellbeing of his son.

The child had a stitched laceration above the bridge of his nose, an abrasion on his abdomen and a cut on the right side of his tongue, according to a Department of Human Services petition seeking to remove the boy from his father’s care.

A judge has since ordered the child placed in the custody of the human services department. Now out of jail on bond and required to use a device that constantly monitors his alcohol consumption, Salyers is allowed supervised visits, according to court records.

A judge considered the boy “at imminent risk of harm due to his father’s continual misuse of medication and alcohol, which causes him to make poor decisions about (the child’s) safety.”

According to the petition, the boy was unrestrained in the front seat of the vehicle.

The day after the crash, Salyers told Children’s Protective Services he had taken his pain, nerve and anti-depression pills and drank a beer April 13. He said he then “blacked out” and does not remember what occurred.