Hayden man faces child cruelty charges

An 18-year-old Hayden man was arrested Sunday for injury to a child for allegedly using a 25-pound bag of dried drink mix to hold a girl face down on a storage room floor so she would fall asleep there.

Zacharee J. Wright was arrested because his alleged actions could have suffocated the child under the weight of the drink mix, according to a Kootenai County Sheriff's Department report. The bag stretched the length of the girl's back, the report said.

Wright, the stepfather, reportedly told a sheriff's deputy that he did not provide the girl with a blanket or pillow to sleep with on the bare concrete floor at the home in the 1100 block of East Whispering Pines Road.

Wright, the girl, and the mother, Leann C. Wright, live in the basement of the residence, where the storage room is located.

The deputy's report said, "Zacharee told me that (the girl) was left in the room for approximately 30 minutes and told me that he checked on her approximately every 10 minutes."

Another family member, not the mother, found the child after going into the storage room to get some canned food.

The officer wrote, "(The other family member) told me while she was in the room she heard whimpering."

The family member told Wright's father, Daniel Wright, who removed the girl immediately from the room and called law enforcement.

The deputy noticed a red mark with dirt and grime on the child's cheek, "which appeared as though her face had been pushed down onto the concrete floor."