Cops: Dad Tosses Son, 4, by Side of Highway

A father abandoned his 4-year-old son along a West Texas highway, and the injured boy spent hours alone in the dark before a passing motorist picked him up, police said. Carlos Rico, 22, stopped his car along a cactus-lined stretch of Interstate 20 near Sweetwater about 3am Tuesday and "threw the boy out of the car like a bag of garbage," a police chief told the Abilene Reporter-News Tuesday.

The boy was picked up about three hours later and taken to a hospital, where doctors removed at least 500 cactus spines from his body. The boy was in the state's custody yesterday. Rico told investigators that God told him to choke the boy and expel him from the car, the chief said. "I've seen a lot of bad things," he added. "I've never seen a 4-year-old angel left on the side of the road for dead. He's such a sweet little boy." (More Texas stories.)