A Dayton man was arrested Friday after a Rhea County Grand Jury indicted him for raping a child.

Robert Newell Mills, 30, of Doc Smith Road, allegedly raped a 5-year-old boy in an empty school bus in the Mills Lakeside Trailer Park earlier this month, Rhea County Family Violence Task Force Investigator Rocky Potter said.

On June 3, Rhea County Sheriff's Sgt. Dean Cranfield responded to an alleged fight at the Mills Lakeside Trailer Park, according to a report.

When Cranfield arrived at the scene Gregory A. Rhoden, 28, was asking Kenneth Andrew Jonte, 28, if he had seen the 5-year-old boy, Cranfield's report stated.

The men then heard noises coming from a bus parked in the trailer park. They looked through a window of the bus and told Cranfield they saw Mills and the 5-year-old, "wrestling around in the floor of the bus," Cranfield's report stated.

"[Rhoden and Jonte] had words with Robert Mills as he was coming off the bus," Cranfield stated in his report.

According to Cranfield's report, Rhoden and Jonte said Mills then went to his mother's trailer in the Mills Lakeside Trailer Park and he and his mother began loading clothes and other items into the back of his truck.

Potter investigated the case and presented the evidence to the June Grand Jury, which met on June 2.

Mills remains in the Rhea County Jail in lieu of a $150,000 bond.

This is not the first time Mills has been accused of raping a child. In October of 2001, Mills and David Palazzolo, 34, of Chattanooga, were indicted for raping two young girls.

Several times in June of 2001, Mills allegedly sexually assaulted a 9-year-old girl both at his home and near a swimming hole in Wolf Creek, according to former Chief Deputy Charles Byrd, who investigated crimes against children for the sheriff's department.

According to Byrd, the two men reportedly enticed the girls into Mills' home by inviting them to play a game of Monopoly.

However, the case never went to trial. The parents were apprehensive about the case and decided to retire it on April 9. They still have one year to decide if they want to proceed, according to Rhea County Criminal Court records.

Sarah B. Hodge can be reached at shodge@xtn.net.