A Texas mother is taking action after her son came home with injuries to his neck and ears, allegedly from abuse by a teacher’s aide.
Denise Sonnier provided FOX 26 photos of a thumbprint embedded in her 5-year-old son’s throat and that show scratches on his ear. Cameron Sonnier told his mother that a teacher’s aide at Beatrice Mayes Institute, the school he attends in Houston, choked him on Friday, Sept. 2, and the day before, she pulled him by the ear. The mother is outraged.
“I feel like that teacher should be put in jail, she assaulted him,” Sonnier said.
The kindergartner said he asked the teacher’s aide to use the bathroom, and she said no. He didn’t want to urinate on himself, his mother said, so when he could not hold it anymore, he ran out of the classroom to the bathroom. Sonnier said the teacher’s aide went into the bathroom and grabbed the boy by his neck. Cameron said he was afraid.
Sonnier said she received a call Friday from the school nurse, alerting her that Cameron had an injury.
“She said Cameron had a scratch on his neck, and she was going to clean it up because the skin had been broken; it was like a nail print, like a rounding of a nail,” Sonnier said.
Sonnier said the same teacher’s aide is responsible for both injuries, and she now plans to remove Cameron and his twin sister from the school. She has also filed a police report, according to FOX 26.
Sonnier said she is so angry that she hopes she doesn’t come face to face with the aide.
“I don’t think I would be talking to her, honestly,” Sonnier said, struggling to hold back tears. “To be honest, as a mother, I never — I don’t understand why would you choke a baby.”
School superintendent Christopher Mayes plans to meet with Cameron’s parents and the teacher’s aide, who is on paid administrative leave pending an investigation. Mayes said he is “bound by law not to reveal any confidential information about the student or the specific details.”
“I will be seeking to confirm that our student discipline and school safety policies were implemented correctly,” Mayes said in a statement. “Subsequently, I will appropriate any action necessary for the well-being of the child and of the School.”
