A Hilo grand jury has indicted a 42-year-old Hilo woman who allegedly locked her 12-year-old son in his bedroom without food as punishment for taking food from the family’s locked refrigerator.
The two-count indictment, returned Wednesday, charges Ann Marie Lung with first-degree terroristic threatening, a Class C felony punishable by five years imprisonment, and second-degree unlawful imprisonment, a misdemeanor.
According to police, the boy escaped from his second-story room by climbing out a window the morning of Sept. 25 after being locked inside since the night of Sept. 23.
Police say the juvenile ran to school and reported to a school resource officer that he had been given only water and no food after being locked up by Lung.
The victim said Lung had given him what police described as a choice of corporal punishment or being locked in his room for two days without food.
Lung was originally arrested Sept. 25 at her Hema Street residence, and the boy and four minor siblings were taken into protective custody.
She was rearrested Friday on a bench warrant accompanying the indictment and ordered to appear at 1:30 p.m. Tuesday before Hilo Circuit Judge Peter Kubota.
Lung was then released on $12,000 bail she posted at the original time of arrest.
The bench warrant orders Lung to undergo substance abuse and mental health assessments and to comply with any court-ordered treatments from those assessments until clinically discharged.
She’s also ordered to have no contact with, threaten or harm the victim or the other four minors who were taken into custody. All are identified in court records by initials only.
Lung’s original court date of Oct. 24 in Hilo District Court is rendered null by the indictment, which moved the case to Circuit Court.
Email John Burnett at jburnett@hawaiitribune-herald.com.
