2yearold Archives - Home Safety Tech Pros

2-year-old leaves day care with braid yanked out, mom suing

homesafetytechpros — Thu, 10 Apr 2025 10:03:38 +0000

Insets: Photos provided by Myla Hemingway’s mother, Tamara Hemingway, showing her hair before and after the 2-year-old’s braid was pulled out (WABC/YouTube). Background: Growing Kids Academy in Ocean Township, N.J., where Myla Hemingway went to day care (WABC/YouTube).

A New Jersey mother says she is taking legal action against a day care that has given her no explanation for how her 2-year-old daughter came home last week with one of her “cornrow” hair braids missing from her head — claiming they didn’t know if her child “pulled it out” herself or whether something more nefarious happened.

“You have to use some type of force for a braid to be removed,” Tamara Hemingway told New York ABC station WABC about her daughter, Myla, and what happened to her.

“It was a cornrow so it was braided down to her scalp,” Hemingway said. “There’s no way that, I don’t know who could have done it, but I know for a fact she or a kid would not have done that.”

The mom told WABC she was furious after seeing her child come home from the Growing Kids Academy in Ocean Township last week with the missing braid. A worker from the school had notified her that she thought a braid was missing but wasn’t sure, so she sent Hemingway a photo to confirm.

“That’s when I saw the big bald spot on my child’s head with the braid missing,” Hemingway said. “They’re supposed to notify me. Just to even, like, give whatever little information you do have about the incident until you look into it further and confirm. But no one even called me to just let me know that little bit of information.”

Hemingway’s lawyer, Marc Caswell, told WABC that what troubles him most about the case is that the facility allegedly “deflected” and told his client “various different things” about what possibly happened, including placing the blame on Myla.

“They didn’t know if her child pulled it out,” Caswell said. “They didn’t know what happened at first, they said that they had no idea that it even happened.”

Hemingway has since removed her daughter from the day care and says the youngster is now sensitive to people touching her hair after the incident.

“I’m very upset and I’m very frustrated because this is my child,” she told WABC. “She’s not able to let me know what happened. And that’s the concerning part, the fact that they’re just so insensitive. No one even called me to check on her, see how she was doing.”

Caswell and Hemingway did not elaborate on what legal action they would take against Growing Kids Academy and its staff, only that they would file a lawsuit. A day care worker told Law&Crime on Wednesday that no one was available to speak about what’s being alleged.

The female staffer was asked if she knew anything about the situation and said: “All I know is it’s unsubstantiated. That nothing’s been found.”

Attempts by Law&Crime to reach Caswell and Hemingway for comment were unsuccessful.

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Day care worker allegedly slapped 2-year-old over spitting

homesafetytechpros — Sun, 26 Jan 2025 06:26:56 +0000

Joyce Perkins (Johnson County Sheriff’s Office).

An Indiana woman attacked a toddler but insists that she did not hit the child very hard, authorities in the Hoosier State say.

Joyce Perkins, 31, stands accused of battery on a person less than 14 years old, according to the Johnson County Prosecutor’s Office.

The underlying incident occurred on Nov. 4, 2024, at Kiddie Academy of Greenwood on South Morgantown Road in Greenwood — a medium-sized city and part of the broader Indianapolis metro area.

Perkins first lost her job at the day care. The director told Johnson County sheriff’s deputies that he fired the defendant on the day the incident occurred, according to court documents obtained by Indianapolis-based NBC affiliate WTHR and Fox affiliate WXIN.

The director followed up by sending a video to law enforcement.

The footage allegedly shows a 2-year-old boy spitting on Perkins while she tends to another child. Then, the since-fired worker is seen “instantly” slapping the boy’s “face hard enough to spin him around and into a cabinet behind him,” according to a probable cause affidavit.

“I had to smack him because he spit all in my face,” the defendant is allegedly heard saying in the video.

Prosecutors say the video also contains audio of Perkins saying: “hell no” and “ya, he spit in my face, I don’t do that.”

More Law&Crime coverage: Day care worker repeatedly kicked toddlers in the back, 134 instances of abuse caught on film: Sheriff

After the alleged slap, Perkins is allegedly seen taking the boy out of the room by his shirt, according to law enforcement.

“Speaking generally, video evidence is very strong evidence and it’s good to have it,” Johnson County prosecutor Lance Hamner told WRTV. “I feel that as a prosecutor our job is to protect. It’s not to just enforce the law. The job requires we use the law to protect people.”

A detective reviewed the footage and eventually caught up with the defendant at her home earlier this week.

During an interview, Perkins allegedly told the detective she had “a reflection, a reflex,” to the child spitting on her. The defendant allegedly went on to say: “I didn’t hit him bad, you know, I just gave him a little small tap. He didn’t cry or nothing.”

Perkins allegedly said the boy was “acting up” on the day in question — by throwing toys while others helped to tidy the premises. The defendant allegedly said the child spit on when she asked him directly to help clean up.

More Law&Crime coverage: Day care teacher allegedly caught on video at work treating 3-month-old boy like ‘rag doll’ and ‘aggressively’ shaking baby bouncer until he went ‘limp’

The defendant allegedly went on to claim that she had not actually hurt the boy and allegedly may have defended her actions by saying: “he was the one spitting on me and that’s battery too.”

The detective is said to have responded that the woman’s alleged batterer was only two years old.

“It was my mother’s instinct to react,” the defendant allegedly reiterated. “He didn’t cry or nothing.”

Perkins was also reported to two state agencies.

More Law&Crime coverage: Georgia home day care owner arrested for second time in 2 weeks on over 30 child abuse allegations

In a statement, the day care center addressed the incident:

Recently, an isolated incident occurred involving a staff member who failed to meet our professional and ethical standards. We acted immediately, terminating her employment and reporting the matter to the Department of Child Services (DCS). The state licensing authority conducted a thorough investigation and confirmed that we responded appropriately and took every possible measure within our control to address the situation.

The law enforcement investigation is said to be ongoing.

Perkins was not detained as of this writing, jail records show.

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Dad who let 2-year-old son starve in crib learns fate

homesafetytechpros — Thu, 19 Dec 2024 18:10:33 +0000

Inset: Jonathon Matthew Cheek (Macomb County Jail). Background: The home where Cheek’s toddler starved to death (WJBK).

A 26-year-old man in Michigan will spend decades behind bars for killing his 2-year-old son last year, starving the boy to death inside the home they shared with the child’s mother. Macomb County Circuit Court Judge Edward Servitto on Wednesday ordered Jonathan Matthew Cheek to serve a sentence of 24 to 50 years in a state correctional facility in connection with the toddler’s horrific death, authorities announced.

Cheek in October reached a deal with prosecutors in which he agreed to plead no contest to one count of second-degree murder and one count of second-degree child abuse. In exchange for his plea, prosecutors agreed to recommend a maximum five-decade sentence for Cheek, who had been facing the possibility of life in prison.

Servitto also sentenced Cheek to up to 10 years on the child abuse charge, to be served concurrent with the murder sentence, meaning at the same time. Cheek was given credit for 643 days of time served.

“This is a heartbreaking and profoundly sad case,” Macomb County Prosecutor Peter J. Lucido said in a statement following the sentencing hearing. “A two-year-old child, full of potential and deserving of love and care, was failed in the most devastating way. No sentence can bring back this innocent life, but hopefully the family can begin to heal.”

The victim’s mother, 28-year-old Sierra Pearl Zaitona, is facing the same pair of charges as Cheek. Her trial is currently scheduled to begin on April 1, 2025.

Sierra Pearl Zaitona (Macomb County Jail).

As previously reported by Law&Crime, Cheek and Zaitona on Thursday, March 16, 2023, called 911 and reported finding their toddler son dead in his crib. A subsequent autopsy performed by the Office of the Medical Examiner determined that the victim’s cause of death was starvation, prosecutors said.

During legal proceedings following the parents’ arrests, prosecutors said the victim was the biological son of Cheek and Zaitona and that he was in good health before being placed back in their custody.

“For the record, the child was healthy in foster care, and once it got into the care of these two individuals, it met its demise,” Macomb County Assistant Prosecutor Molly Zappitell said at an arraignment, the Macomb Daily reported.

It is unclear why the child was previously in foster care or when he was returned to Zaitona and Cheek.

When seeking to have the couple held on high bonds, prosecutors argued that Zaitona was a flight risk and said that she intentionally gave birth to the child in Ohio “to avoid alerting CPS.”

Zaitona is currently scheduled to appear in court for a pretrial hearing on March 17, 2025.

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