Mother has son arrested for theft

US: An American mother had her 12-year-old son arrested for opening his Christmas present early.

US:An American mother had her 12-year-old son arrested for opening his Christmas present early.

Brandi Ervin called the police after discovering that the youngster had repeatedly disobeyed her by taking a Nintendo Game Boy from its hiding place at his great-grandmother's house and playing with it.

Officers in Columbia, South Carolina, handcuffed the boy and took him to the police station on petty larceny charges.

Ms Ervin, who picked her son up after church, said she had done it to teach him a lesson.

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"He's been going through life doing things . . . and getting away with it," she explained. "I'd rather call [ the police] myself than someone else call for him doing something worse than this."

She added that the boy had been diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder in the last year, but that his medicine did not seem to be helping.