The arrest of a 10-year-old girl with learning disorders is at the center of controversy over how police detained her and then ultimately decided to charge her following an incident at her Texas elementary school.
McKenna Lombardo was arrested on May 17, 2024, at Cryar Intermediate School in Conroe, Texas, KWTX reported.
Teachers called police to the school after the fifth-grader was “throwing markers,” being “physically aggressive,” and had “pinned her [associate principal’s] arm against (a) door frame,” a police report states.
Bodycam footage showed the officers’ arrival at the school playground and their encounter with teachers and McKenna.
“She blocked me in the door. I’m not filing charges, just so you guys know,” one teacher is heard on bodycam video telling an officer. “That’s why I called you, because I didn’t know where we were headed.”
Even though the teacher shared her wishes not to file charges, subsequent conversations with one of the responding cops and another faculty member revealed her decision to change course.
Teacher No. 2: “She assaulted you.”
Teacher No. 1: “She did assault me. I am bleeding.”
Officer: “You are bleeding.”
Teacher No. 1: “No, she pinned me against the door. She blocked the door and my arm happened to be there.”
Officer: “That’s up to you with the arm. If you want to do something with that? That’s totally your call.”
Teacher No. 1: “I mean, if it will help.”
School faculty members are seen on bodycam video walking McKenna inside the school to the office with the police officers accompanying them. Along the way, they all stop at a bathroom.
McKenna goes inside and refuses to come out. Even after she comes out, she tries to go back in, but her teachers stretch their arms out to usher her out as one cop orders her to exit the bathroom.
The cop is then seen grabbing McKenna’s arm to try to handcuff her. She protests, saying she wants to get her shoes. The cop tells her, “I will get your shoes.”
After finally cuffing her, he walks McKenna to the school office and then speaks again to the two teachers.
Officer: “Did you think about that?”
Teacher No. 1: “I feel silly doing that.”
Officer: “I’ve seen way less. … I’ve seen way less.”
Teacher No. 1: “So, what would the process be?”
Officer: “Well, she’s in handcuffs already, so she’s going to juvenile. So, she just gets a charge with assault, assault on a public servant. Take a statement from you and two photographs.”
Teacher No, 1: “Even if it was just like I was in the way?”
Officer: “Oh yeah, it don’t matter.”
At one point, McKenna is walked to a squad car where she is put in the back seat.
Her father was also called to the school. When he arrives, he immediately questions her detainment before demanding she be released.
“I would like her to be released to me, please. Are you charging her right this second?” McKenna’s father is heard on bodycam video asking an officer.
The officer Lombardo spoke to replied, “She’s detained.”
Bodycam footage then showed the cop stepping aside to call the Montgomery County District Attorney’s office to discuss the assault charge against McKenna.
“She assaulted a teacher, slammed her into the wall caused a little laceration on her forearm,” he said in the conversation with the DA’s office.
The charge was accepted.
Three days after the incident, another staff member filed a second assault charge against McKenna, alleging to police that the 10-year-old slammed her hand against a paper towel dispenser while they were in the bathroom.
“I was scared. I was angry and I was sad,” McKenna said while recalling the moments leading up to the arrest.
The fifth-grader explained that before police were called to the school, she got into an argument with a friend in class. She said she blocked the door and her teacher’s arm got in the way, but she didn’t mean to hurt anyone.
The arrest also comes just a year after the passing and enactment of a new Texas law called the “No Kids in Cuffs Law” that states that a peace officer “may not restrain a student enrolled in fifth grade or below unless the student poses a serious risk of harm to the student or another person.”
“I’m worried because I don’t want it to happen to anybody else,” McKenna remarked. “Younger than me. Older than me. I know I was being, like, bad, and I wasn’t listening to the teacher, but I didn’t think I was going to get arrested.”
McKenna’s father, a former police officer, shared that he was horrified after viewing the bodycam videos. He believed the cops pressured the teachers as they discussed potential charges.
“They were doing whatever they could in order to solicit a felony charge against a 10-year-old. It’s just, it’s sick. I mean a special-needs 10-year-old,” Matt Lombardo said.
He shared that his daughter has autism, among other disorders, which he believed the school was aware of. He added that the officers had no reason to place his daughter in handcuffs since she wasn’t an immediate threat to anyone before she was detained.
A state senator who authored the “No Kids in Cuffs” law also viewed the bodycam videos and shared the same concerns as Lombardo, adding that the justification to charge McKenna “was made up after the fact.”
“It appears, though, if I was the lawyer on the case, [the teacher] was being urged to do it by the police officer to say that she was assaulted when she said, ‘I feel real silly about this,’” state Sen. Royce West said.
McKenna faced two charges of assault on a public servant, which were later dropped in July following a hearing with Montgomery County officials where the Lombardo family shared their concerns about the arrest and McKenna’s treatment by police.
A report released this year by the Government Accountability Office revealed that in the years before the COVID pandemic, students of color with disabilities were arrested at higher rates than white students with disabilities and their peers without disabilities. Researchers also noted that arrests are more typical when police are involved in student discipline.
In 2020, the rate declined as at-home and remote learning increased nationwide, but students with disabilities were still disciplined at disproportionate rates.
