A Twentynine Palms man was arrested for child abuse Wednesday after a school principal noticed the man’s son had been injured. According to a Sheriff’s report, the principal at Condor Elementary was talking with the boy at school when the boy told him his jaw hurt because his father grabbed his face and twisted it, as well as slapped him in the eye. The principal reported it to the Sheriff’s Department, who determined that the boy’s babysitter had told his father, Michael Rodgers, 27, that the boy did not want to do his homework. When Rodgers and his son got home, Rodgers told him to get a belt, and when the boy resisted, Rodgers squeezed his face by the jaw, which caused the boy’s teeth to cut the inside of his cheek, and then he started tearing the boy’s clothes off. Michael Rodgers was arrested about 5 p.m. yesterday for investigation of child cruelty, booked into the Morongo Basin Jail with his bail set at $100,000.
