You've got to keep an eye on Colton, as his neighbors on his quiet street in Nephi, Utah, learned during the last two years. He's not a bad kid on purpose — but people know to keep their houses and cars locked up now, which they never did before, because if they don't Colton will get in and mess around with whatever he finds.

So you've got to watch him. He doesn't mean anything by it.  Although he's 13, Colton is autistic and interacts with the world at the level of a five-year-old. You can't really get mad at him when he doesn't know his own strength and plays a little rough with the smaller kids, and then gets mad when you send him home and throws a couple of things and curses.

There are reasons for concern, though. Neighbors have watched Colton poke sticks through fences at people's dogs, including a former police dog whose owner luckily always managed to get there in time. He's thrown rocks at passing cars, wandered dangerously in the middle of the street and pulled down his pants in public. Once, he acted as though he was going to take a dump on someone's ATV that was parked in the front yard, although the owners stopped him in time.

The reason neighbors were angry and worried at the same time — particularly Darren and Kallie Galbraith, who had a long-running feud over Colton's behavior with Colton's mother, Carrie — was that Colton wasn't supervised, in their view. He could get himself hurt, and he is also getting big enough that he could hurt someone else. One time the Galbraith's oldest son came home and found Colton jumping up and down on top of their horse trailer. Darren doesn't know how he got up there, or how the kid kept from falling off and breaking his neck. Then there's the time Colton wandered into an elderly neighbor's bathroom while she was in the tub — a recipe for all kinds of disaster. The litany of complaints is backed up by the Nephi Police Department, which has sent officers to the homes of Carrie and the Galbraiths many, many times. Their visits had more to do with the conflict between the adults, however.

One house separates Darren and Kallie's place from Carrie and Colton's, and the only fence is chain-link, so each family has a full view of the other's front and back yards. Carrie made it clear she thinks the Galbraiths are prejudiced against her disabled son.  The Galbraiths were furious that no one seemed interested in corralling Colton, especially after an incident in which Colton threw rocks at their daughter hard enough to leave large bruises.

Not that the grownups were behaving themselves either. As the grudges intensified, they traded foul language when passing by each others' houses, flipped each other the bird and taunted each other from the safety of their yards. Hand-to-hand combat was narrowly avoided on several occasions, usually the ones when the police were called.

But nothing changed. Colton still roamed the neighborhood, people still had to be extra watchful of their children and property, and one night after yet another visit from the police, Darren knew he'd had it. So he grabbed some spray paint and a piece of cardboard, made the following sign —

CAUTION RETARD'S IN AREA

— and hung it from a tree in his front yard, angled toward Colton's house. The next day Carrie, Colton, his sister and Carrie's companion, Brad Morgan, piled into the car and drove down the street. Colton didn't notice the sign (he wouldn’t have been able to read it anyway) — but his sister did, and she asked, "What does that say?" Carrie knew the Galbraiths sometimes sold watermelons and she figured they were advertising. It was Brad, behind the wheel, who first read the sign's words."We're calling the police," he said.

Spend any time with Colton, and you'll realize that he can get into mischief easily. But he does mind his mother. He stops when he's told. But he does have to be told. Colton has thick, dark-brown hair that almost covers his ears, innocent brown eyes and an open smile. He's rambunctious and enthusiastically, even aggressively, affectionate, and weak on the concepts of boundaries and personal space. He's the type who will hug you once, and then again, and then it's as if he gets stuck on repeat and just has to keep on hugging. If he sees something he likes — say, a visitor's bald head — he'll want to touch it, and touch it, and touch it again. Until his mom says, "Colton, that's enough."