COLUMBIA COUNTY, Fla. – A disturbing video obtained by News4JAX shows a school paraprofessional in Columbia County sitting on a child with autism while he was on the playground.
It happened in April at Summers Elementary School in Lake City, and the child was not injured in the incident.
The child’s mother said the paraprofessional was fired from the school, but she said that’s not enough. The paraprofessional wasn’t formally charged even though a deputy submitted a warrant for aggravated child abuse.
Jasmine Dandy said her 5-year-old son is doing fine now, but she isn’t.
She wants to know why someone who is around children all day would do such a thing.
The video shows a now-former Summers Elementary School paraprofessional ripping a toy away from a child and then sitting on him.
“Every time I kind of like drive past school, he says ‘bad school,’” Dandy said.
Dandy wants to see more punishment.
Witnesses said the 48-year-old paraprofessional — who News4JAX is not identifying because she was not charged with a crime — was collecting toys from another class when 5-year-old Chazz Neal Jr. refused to give it up.
After the first struggle for the toy, the child throws mulch in the paraprofessional’s direction.
“My son, he does have autism. So sometimes he does have tantrums,” Dandy said.
Then the woman sits on the child’s stomach for about 10 seconds.
“She went back to my child as if like she wants to fight him or something just because he threw a little bit of grass, which you know, you should know how to work around children that has disabilities. And that’s what I’m not understanding,” Dandy said.
Dandy went to press charges for child abuse and the Columbia County Sheriff’s Office filed a warrant.
But Dandy said the State Attorney’s Office wouldn’t pursue it because her son didn’t have bruises or physical injuries.
News4JAX spoke with an attorney who said based on the video, he is surprised the State Attorney’s Office didn’t pursue a battery charge because it looks like a harmful offense of touching against the child’s will which is the definition of battery in Florida.
“I just still don’t and didn’t understand why they couldn’t arrest her because only because she didn’t leave bruises on him but he is the autistic child and it really messes up his mental state of mind,” Dandy said. “I want to see charges. If I can’t physically, physically talk to her, then maybe I can get my son’s story and his voice out.”
News4JAX called the State Attorney’s Office to get more understanding of why it didn’t pursue charges but it did not immediately respond.
The paraprofessional told investigators the child was “hitting another paraprofessional on the playground and she stepped in to stop them.”
She told investigators the child threw a handful of mulch at her and started laughing at her. When she tried to correct him, he started crying and she asked him to get up before she got up but he refused.
In the warrant, a deputy wrote: “[The paraprofessional] was responsible for Neal in that moment and was acting as his caregiver when she pinned him down. She maliciously punished him in a way a reasonable person would not have done and posed a serious risk to his health when she sat on his stomach/chest for that long all because he threw mulch at her.”
Dandy said she doesn’t have a problem with this school, so her son will be back here this school year. What she doesn’t want is for the paraprofessional to have the chance to be around any else’s child ever again.