PORTLAND, Ind. — An eastern Indiana man on the run for years to avoid criminal proceedings has been sentenced to 13 years in prison for forcing a 5-year-old boy’s hands into scalding water.
Muncie’s Star Press reports that Marcus A. Ternet, 53, was sentenced Friday by a Jay County judge. Jurors convicted him in December for battery resulting in serious bodily injury to a person under 14 years old. He faced a maximum 20-year term.
The incident occurred in a trailer in Portland’s Oakwood Mobile Home Park in 2011. The boy was treated for burns at Jay County Hospital and Fort Wayne’s St. Joseph Hospital.
Ternet’s trial was set to begin in 2012, but he never showed. A judge then issued a warrant for his arrest. He was arrested and jailed in 2019.
