SALISBURY – Deputies said a 13-year-old threatened his live-in babysitter with a steak knife Tuesday afternoon when she asked him to do his homework.
According to a Rowan County Sheriff’s Office report, the 31-year-old babysitter made an after-school snack for the boy at a home in the 600 block of Hawkinstown Road and asked him about the homework about 4:30 p.m.
But the boy didn’t respond.
She asked him several more times, the report said, and when she walked into another room and picked up his bookbag, the teenager became upset.
“She heard him make a noise behind her and when she turned around, the juvenile was standing there holding a steak knife in his right hand,” the report said. “He told her he would stab her if she didn’t get out of his bookbag.”
The woman told officers she put the bag down and immediately called 911.
The boy was taken into custody, but was given a juvenile referral and released into the custody of his mother.
A juvenile referral allows officers to set up a court date in juvenile services.