Mena father arrested while trying to report his 2-year-old missing; FBI says investigation is ‘ongoing’

MENA, Ark. — Seven months after a Mena father was pepper-sprayed and arrested outside the police station while trying to report his 2-year-old son missing, the boy is still gone, and the FBI says its investigation is ongoing.

“The FBI is aware of the situation and is taking appropriate steps in response,” Jessica Worthington, public affairs officer for the FBI’s Little Rock field office, told Arkansas Breaking News on Saturday. “The investigation remains ongoing, and we are unable to provide any additional information at this time.”

The child, Craig Bailey Corristan, is listed on the Arkansas Crime Information Center’s Never Forgotten missing-persons site as missing since Nov. 14, 2025, with the Mena Police Department as the reporting agency. He is 2 years old, with blond hair and brown eyes, and was about 2 feet tall and 25 pounds when last seen. The listing also carries his name under his mother’s surname, Freeman.

Video of the March 15 arrest of his father, Edward Ross Corristan Jr., 35, spread across social media in early October and drew national coverage. A Change.org petition created last week calling for an independent investigation of the arrest had drawn about 2,400 signatures by Saturday.

The arrest

The video, which Corristan told KARK his mother recorded, shows him arguing with Sgt. Eddie Price in front of the station for several minutes before Price walks to his patrol car. Corristan follows and stands outside the driver’s door. Price tells him repeatedly to step back. When Corristan raises his hands and stays put, Price gets out, sprays him, punches him in the face while his hands are still up and takes him to the ground. Corristan falls backward and appears to be knocked out as he is handcuffed. Officers later help him into an ambulance.

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Corristan was cited that day for interference with a law enforcement officer, a Class A misdemeanor, and disorderly conduct, a Class C misdemeanor. The criminal information, filed April 8 by Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Mike Hamby, accuses him of knowingly employing or threatening physical force against an officer and of using abusive or obscene language in a public place “in a manner to provoke a violent or disorderly response.”

He pleaded not guilty. Mena District Court records show District Judge Danny Thrailkill tried the case July 21, found Corristan guilty and assessed $1,390 in fines and costs with $500 suspended, plus 10 days in jail, suspended. Corristan paid $860 online the same day. The docket notes the judge waived an appeal bond.

What the department says

The Mena Police Department said in a statement this month that the use of force was reviewed under department policy after the arrest and that, out of an abundance of caution and to provide an independent review, the information was turned over to the Arkansas State Police. “Because this matter may be the subject of further legal proceedings, the department will not comment further at this time,” the statement said.

Police Chief Tommy Stueart went further in a statement to KARK on Tuesday.

“Corristan had multiple encounters with the Mena Police Department with visitation and custody issues. Corristan was advised the proper procedure and protocol to get law enforcement assistance,” Stueart said. “Once the court order was verified with Polk County Circuit Court, a case was opened, the child was entered as missing, and the investigation started. When law enforcement officers learned that the mother and child were no longer in our jurisdiction, FBI assumed the case.”

“The arrest incident was reviewed internally and determined no policy violations occurred,” he said. “Out of abundance of caution, prosecuting attorney Debra Buschman requested the Arkansas State Police to review the arrest. I’m still awaiting the outcome of the request.”

A department spokesperson told KARK the child was entered into the state and National Crime Information Center databases within days of the judge’s custody order. Corristan told the station he believed the department had taken no action and was still refusing to take a report when he was arrested.

The FBI did not answer questions about when it became involved or whether any federal warrant has been issued.

‘We do not take reports for interference with custody’

Recordings of Corristan’s visits to the station, including the department’s own lobby camera footage from Nov. 19, 2025, reviewed by Arkansas Breaking News, show how those encounters went in the four months before the arrest.

That morning, after the mother failed to appear for the first exchange under the new schedule, Corristan tells an officer at the front desk he was supposed to receive his son at 8 a.m., that an officer had already checked the mother’s home and found no one, and that he wants to file a report for kidnapping and interference with child custody.

“We do not take reports for interference with custody,” the officer says. “That’s something you need to talk to your attorney about.”

“My child is missing,” Corristan says.

“Missing from where?” the officer asks.

“From my custody.”

The exchange turns into a shouting match over whether custody interference is a felony. “That’s not a felony,” the officer says, then: “Don’t raise your (expletive) voice to me.” Corristan asks for a supervisor and a public-records request form. Later, on the same footage, he tells the desk, “My son’s been missing for over 24 hours now, so I’d like to file the missing person’s report.”

Stueart comes out and tells him the offense is a misdemeanor with “enough defenses in the statute that gives her an out,” and that a parent “does not have to release that child” if she fears for the child’s safety. “That’s what she told our officer,” he says. When Corristan says that is hearsay and asks whether the department has reached the mother that day, the chief tells him to leave.

“Leave my office. I’m in charge of this office. I am the police chief and I’m telling you to leave,” Stueart says. Corristan asks what will happen if he does not. “I will have you arrested.”

Under the statute as it now reads, keeping a child from a person with court-ordered custody is a Class A misdemeanor, a Class D felony if the child is kept outside Arkansas, and taking a child from a parent’s custody without lawful authority is a Class C felony.

In a recording made about two weeks later, Stueart reads Corristan the officer’s report from that Nov. 19 morning. At about 7:45 a.m., it says, the boy’s grandmother, Tamara Cova, came to the station, said her daughter had left town, said she did not know where, and handed over a note in which Freeman wrote that she did not feel the child was safe. Cova told the officer she knew a custody exchange was scheduled and expected Corristan to be upset when her daughter did not show.

“We don’t have proof that that child is missing,” Stueart says. “We know the child is with a bi-custodial parent.” He tells Corristan the matter belongs to the circuit judge who set the schedule and that he should “go through the correct court procedures.” Asked whether a welfare check at the home found anyone, he says, “I believe so,” and agrees no one was located. Asked whether he thinks the mother and child are still in Arkansas, he says, “I have no idea either.”

Corristan asks what in the note indicates he is the danger. “I refuse to talk to you,” Stueart says, and walks away.

Corristan had already gone back to court. His emergency petition was filed Nov. 20 and denied the same day.

A third recording was made after the March 11 order and days before the arrest. Corristan hands the chief the body attachment and asks what the next steps are for an Amber Alert and for entering his son in missing-persons databases. Stueart says he has to “talk to the prosecutor to proceed” and “coordinate with state police” to see whether the case “meets the criteria to enter that child.” Told that a missing-child entry and an Amber Alert have different criteria, he says, “I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about Amber.” He ends the conversation with “It should be early next week.”

In the same recording, Corristan says officers had told him the department verified the mother’s safety through photographs. “I was emailed, yes,” Stueart says, describing “the picture with, I think, the computer with the date on it.” Corristan says the department had answered his public-records request by saying no such record existed. “I don’t remember,” the chief says.

On the day of the arrest, a Sunday, Corristan hands Price the custody order and the department’s own missing-child policy and asks him to open a missing-persons report so the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and the Morgan Nick Foundation can begin searching. “They can’t do anything until Mena Police Department enters my son’s name into the database as missing,” he says.

“I don’t have the grounds to do it,” Price says. “You don’t meet the criteria.”

Asked which part of the policy’s definition of a missing child is not met, Price points to the residency element: “They don’t live here no more.” He says the child “wasn’t taken from his custody, he just wasn’t delivered to you.” When Corristan points to the policy, Price says: “Policy and procedures, not a law. It can be burnt today and rewritten tomorrow.” He says he is acting on the advice of his chief, that the chief “said he was handling the situation” and had told Corristan to come back Monday or Tuesday after talking to the prosecutor, and that he had watched the video of that conversation that morning.

“Just to be clear, you’re refusing emergency services,” Corristan says.

“Yes, I am,” Price says.

“Missing children aren’t emergencies?”

“Not when they’re not missing.”

Price walks to his patrol car. The pepper spray and takedown follow within a minute. In the car afterward, Corristan asks whether he is under arrest and for what crime. Price answers that he is and cites a failure-to-obey statute. On the recording Corristan repeatedly asks for water to flush his eyes, says he cannot breathe or feel his hands and that he hit his head, and is taken away by ambulance.

Arkansas law bars a law enforcement agency from keeping “a policy that requires the observance of a waiting period before accepting and investigating a report of a missing child,” and says an agency “shall not require a delay before accepting or investigating a report of a missing person when reliable information has been provided to the law enforcement agency that the person is missing.” Federal law, 34 U.S.C. 41308, goes further: a missing-child report must be entered into the National Crime Information Center within two hours of receipt.

Two years of custody litigation

Court records show the dispute reaches back to the boy’s birth.

Corristan, then living in Jacksonville, Florida, filed a paternity petition in Polk County Circuit Court on Dec. 18, 2023, saying the mother, Stirling Moriah Cova Freeman, had cut off contact during her pregnancy and would not tell him the baby’s gender or whereabouts.

Freeman’s response, filed in February 2024, denied Corristan was the father and said she had fled Florida for family in Arkansas during the pregnancy. She alleged Corristan had been physically and emotionally abusive, including while she was pregnant, had pressured her to get an abortion and had harassed her family after she moved. She asked for sole custody and supervised visitation only. A DNA test that May confirmed Corristan was the father.

Circuit Judge Andy Riner gave Freeman temporary custody in August 2024, with Corristan getting a few hours every other Saturday, appointed an attorney ad litem for the child, ordered both parents to take drug screens and later ordered mental evaluations for both.

Mena police cited Corristan twice during that period, for third-degree stalking and harassing communications in November 2024 and for stalking and harassment in February 2025, with Freeman named as the victim. Price was the officer on the first case. Warrants were issued in May 2025 along with a no-contact order. Prosecutors dropped both cases on Oct. 21, 2025, and the no-contact order was lifted two weeks later.

Corristan, meanwhile, filed two contempt petitions in 2025 accusing Freeman and her mother of hovering over and recording his visits and telling police the visits had to be supervised when the order said nothing of the kind.

After a trial Aug. 7, 2025, Riner found that neither parent had overcome Arkansas’ presumption of joint custody. His Aug. 22 order added Corristan’s surname to the boy’s birth certificate, set a stepped-up visitation schedule through the fall and ordered an alternating 2-2-3 schedule beginning Nov. 18, with every exchange to happen inside the Mena Walmart. The order warned that a parent who willfully creates conflict to disrupt joint custody could lose it.

Corristan’s last scheduled overnight under that order ended at 10 a.m. Nov. 14. That is the date the state lists the boy as missing.

‘Fine,’ but no help

Freeman did not appear for the first exchange, according to a verified emergency petition Corristan filed Nov. 20. He said he had messaged her repeatedly on the court-ordered co-parenting app with no response and had “contacted all manner of law enforcement in Polk County” for welfare checks and help enforcing the order.

“Law enforcement has informed the Petitioner that the Respondent and the parties’ minor child are ‘fine,’ but no one will assist in enforcing the court ordered visitation,” the petition says.

Riner denied the emergency request the same day, writing that the petition did not show the child or Corristan would suffer “immediate and irreparable injury” before Freeman could be heard and that Arkansas courts “strongly disfavor ex-parte decision making.” He told Corristan to set the matter for a hearing once Freeman had notice.

Getting her notice took three months. Affidavits filed in January said she could not be found, and the clerk issued a warning order published in the newspaper. In February the court manager emailed a March 11 hearing date to Freeman’s last known address. Cova replied March 2 that the address was hers, that her daughter no longer lived with her, had no phone and had been off social media since before the custody hearing, and that she would not accept service on her behalf. She wrote that her daughter had used the address “due to the stalking and harassment by ER Corristan Jr. and his associates.”

Freeman did not appear March 11. Riner found her in “willful, wanton contempt,” awarded Corristan primary custody of the boy, stripped Freeman of visitation until she appears before the court and ordered a body attachment directing the Polk County sheriff “or other law enforcement officer or agency of this State” to take her into custody. The order says law enforcement, “including but not limited to the Mena, Arkansas Police Department,” is directed to help Corristan enforce it. She can purge the contempt by giving Corristan 64 consecutive days with the child and paying $5,000 in attorney fees.

Four days later, Corristan was on the ground outside the police station.

No criminal charge against Freeman appears in state court records.

No lawsuit over the arrest had been filed in state or federal court as of Saturday. The Arkansas State Police has not said publicly whether its review is complete.

Anyone with information about the child’s whereabouts is asked to call Mena police at 479-394-1212 or the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children at 800-843-5678.