Going overboard charging crimes

I just saw an example of (in my opinion) excessive criminal charges in a crime. A man was arrested for chasing cars with a nail gun and a knife. He had apparently stopped taking his psych meds. He was (rightly in my opinion) charged with felony menacing for chasing the cars. Hopefully the authorities will be able to help the man with his psychiatric problems and keep him from again chasing after cards.

However, they also charged him with child abuse, a much more serious felony. How was chasing after (random) cars turned into a child abuse charge? Apparently there was a young child in one of the cars he chased. Most of us think of child abuse as a direct assault on a child. In this case it was by chance that one of the cars the man chased had a child in it, resulting in the more serious charge.

This man should certainly get help, but charging him with child abuse because one of the cars he ran at had a child in it makes a mockery of the law. If any number of people are convicted of child abuse for reasons similar to this it makes the conviction meaningless -- did somebody really abuse a child or is it just there was a child nearby when some other crime was committed?