A California mother is “distraught” after a video shows a Los Angeles preschool owner aggressively mishandling her son.
A video shared by KABC-TV shows the owner of Kinder Kids Christian Preschool grabbing the child’s arms before holding him down on the ground in a classroom. In another clip, the woman carries her 4-year-old son upside down by the ankles. The incident, Battle says, resulted in bruises on her son’s legs.
“She snatches him up from by both shoulders. She could have torn his rotator cuffs and then proceeded to hold him vertically for like 10 seconds. Puts his head on the table. Puts her body weight on him. She’s twisting his arms,” BrieAnn Battle told KTLA about the March 14 incident.
Reports show Battle didn’t discover what happened from the business owner but rather from another employee who brought it to her attention. Battle claims the owner tried to show her different footage when she contacted her.
“The owner-operator showed me the clip from when she took him out into the foyer, and that’s when he was giving her a lot of activity so she thought that was going to be… a better angle,” Battle recalled to KABC. “I tried to even give her the benefit of the doubt when I went in to meet with her, not excusing her behavior, but from mother-to-mother, woman-to-woman, things do get out of control. She’s denying everything, and it’s sickening.”
Fox 11 LA identified the owner as Artea Kirkland, who is accused of telling Battle’s son that she’s “going to teach him a lesson.” The surveillance footage of the incident is about 30 minutes long, per the outlet.
Battle hired an attorney and filed a report to local police, labeling the incident as child abuse. Her son, who says he was “fighting for his life,” hasn’t been under their care since the incident, per the outlets. The mother is pushing for the owner’s license to be revoked and for her to be jailed.
“I was distraught,” Battle said. “Nobody wants to see their child being manhandled like that.”
