SOUTH FULTON, Ga. — The parents of a 2-year-old child say it broke their hearts when they saw video of a daycare center worker abusing their son. That worker is now behind bars.
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“I never in a million years could have expected that that could have happened to us,” Jared Graves told Channel 2′s Tom Jones about the incident that left his son with a gash over his right eye.
City of South Fulton police says surveillance video shows Leapfrog Early Learning Academy teacher N’Kiyah McLester throwing a large wooden block at their child. It left him bleeding above the right eye.
“And he also has swollen blood vessels in the corner of his eye,” Graves said.
The child’s mother says when she arrived to pick up her son Tuesday at the daycare on Flat Shoals Road, she was told he suffered the injury after falling on a mop bucket.
When she and her husband demanded to see the video you can hear her shock when she realized what really happened.
“That’s why he was bleeding. That’s not because of no mop bucket, " you hear her say in the video.
“It took everything in me not to tear that daycare down,” Graves recalled.
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The Graves family called police. They say police took one look at the video and arrested McLester.
She now faces second-degree child cruelty and battery charges.
Graves says the daycare told him McLester was fired, but they wonder why the daycare didn’t call police after they saw what happened.
“No police has it documented where they responded to Leapfrog’s call,” he said.
Jones reached out to the daycare to get its side of the story. First he was told to call back to speak to someone in charge. When he called back he was told the daycare has no comment.
McLester waived her first court appearance this morning.
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