In a news release issued Monday, the Montgomery County district attorney’s office and Upper Perkiomen police announced Kernechel was arrested September 17 and charged with three counts of aggravated assault, simple assault, endangering the welfare of a child and related offenses.
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Kernechel, who is being held at the county prison in lieu of $100,000 cash bail, is scheduled to appear at his preliminary hearing Thursday before District Judge Catherine Hummel-Fried.
Kernechel “did not abuse the child and intends to establish that at trial”, he said.
Those teeth, she reported, belonged to her 4-year-old son. “Certainly, one would expect the child would have experienced extreme pain and from what he has described for us it was an extremely painful and traumatic experience”.
Investigators learned that after JN was injured, Kernechel left him bleeding and crying in bed and did not tell the mother about the injuries when she returned home in the morning, according to the news release.
The boy was also missing three of his upper teeth, the DA said.
The child was immediately transported to Lehigh Valley Hospital for treatment.
Police allege that the child was in sole care of Kernechel when he was injured, and a subsequent medical examination indicated that his “teeth were pulled out”.
Court papers do not indicate how the teeth were allegedly extracted. “What we surmise is that the little boy wasn’t doing exactly what this defendant expected or wanted him to do and it was a reaction that was purely in anger”, Ferman alleged.
When questioned, Kernechel told the woman that her son must have fallen from his bed.
According to The Times Herald, the boy is autistic. She found the boy “asleep on the floor, lying on top of dried blood”, authorities said.
When interviewed by police, the 27-year-old boyfriend explained that when he picked up “JN” to take him “potty” at night, the child slipped from his grasp and hit his face on a nightstand. The child added that Kernechel “was not nice”, according to the complaint.
Investigators asked the boy about the teeth, to which he responded Kernechel “hit and take them [his teeth] out”, prosecutors said.
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While authorities initially took the 6-foot, 3-inch, 185-pound Kernechel into custody on July 27, a further investigation by authorities resulted in the discovery of at least two other incidents of alleged abuse, including a bite mark and bruises to the boy’s arm on April 14 and a small cut and bruise to the left side of the child’s head on May 26, the complaint said.
