A Navy chief was arrested this month after he allegedly charged into his son’s sand soccer match and pummeled an unsuspecting 14-year-old boy with his fists after the teenager jostled with the enraged sailor’s son.
Chief Engineman Jordan Lee Grinnell, 38, was arrested by Virginia Beach Police after he reportedly knocked a 14-year-old boy to the ground and began punching him in the face, according to the Virginian-Pilot.
The boy was hospitalized and received four stitches, his mother told the Pilot. He also suffered a concussion and bloody lip.
The teenager returned to watch the tournament and cheer on his teammates the following day, doing so with one eye that was completely swollen shut, the report said.
“I still can’t get it out of my mind,” Jennifer Moss, the mother of another player who witnessed the beating, told the Pilot. “I didn’t sleep for two days and I’m still having trouble sleeping. The kids who witnessed it are all shaken.”
Toward the end of the game, the boys started shoving each other as they fought for possession of the ball, witnesses said. It was then that Grinnell, a 17-year Navy veteran, stormed the scene to join the fracas.
“I’m thinking he’s coming over to break the boys up,” Moss told the Pilot, only to see “him strike him at least twice.”
The injured youth’s coach finally got the incensed father off the boy by tackling Grinnell, who was then pulled away by several others, the report said.
The youngster’s mother confronted the irate chief after he’d been pulled off her son.
“I asked him did he feel better now,” she told the Pilot. “’Does that make you feel like a big man?’ He said, ‘No it doesn’t, I’m sorry.’”
Grinnell, a Colorado native, currently works with Navy Recruiting District Richmond, Virginia.
He has no prior criminal record, the Pilot stated, and his Navy records show that he’s the recipient of five Good Conduct Medals.
J.D. Simkins is the executive editor of Military Times and Defense News, and a Marine Corps veteran of the Iraq War.
