A city Sanitation Department employee was arrested for allegedly strangling his teenage daughter, police said Thursday.
Mervin Freeman, 38, was squabbling with his 14-year-old daughter in the family’s home on Grassmere Terrace in Far Rockaway, Queens, when he allegedly wrapped his hands around the teen’s throat and choked her at around 10 p.m. on Wednesday, cops said.
Emergency responders treated the young victim at the scene, authorities said.
Freeman, who was off duty, was arrested shortly after the incident at the borough’s 101st Precinct.
He was charged with strangulation in the second-degree, second-degree harassment and acting in a manner injurious to a child less than 17, according to cops.
Freeman works for the Department of Sanitation out of the Brooklyn North 8 Garage, agency spokeswoman Dina Montes said. He was hired in July 2012.
“The Sanitation Department is conducting its own internal investigation,” said Montes.
Freeman’s mom denied that the violent incident ever even happened.
“Let me tell you one thing. This never happened. That’s not true,” the mother, who did not want to be named, told The Post. “No emergency responders came here. There was nothing wrong with her…she wasn’t treated for nothing.”
The woman said that when Freeman came home Wednesday he found his daughter in the house with “man friends and chased them out.”
A neighbor of the family called Freeman “a good man.”
“He is a good father,” the neighbor said. “He was never in trouble…He would never do something like that.”
Freeman made a total pay of $102,841 this year, according to the latest data posted by SeeThroughNY.