A Florida teacher accused of slashing a 5-year-old student’s face with a ruler is now facing one felony count of child abuse after initially blaming the child for the injury.
The teacher, 25-year-old Chrishawn Nicholson of Aspire Preparatory Academy in Miami Gardens, maintained the child cut himself while playing with a pencil in class. But prosecutors say they have a video of Nicholson admitting to the assault.
“The allegations are that she hit a 5-year-old with a ruler, the 5-year-old required medical treatment, and there’s a video where she said, ‘I did pop him,'” a prosecutor said in court on Jan. 10, according to NBC 6 South Florida.
The incident took place at the suburban K-5 charter school on the morning of Nov. 19. When Nicholson contacted the victim’s mother, she said her son had been playing with a pencil and “got cut near his eyebrow,” according to police documents obtained by NBC. The young boy was sent home with a deep gash that required a trip to the hospital and three stitches.
“This was a gash. This wasn’t just a hit. This wasn’t just a minor cut that you can put a Band-Aid. This was a deep cut that required him to get stitches,” the victim’s mother told 7 News Miami. According to the mother, the boy told her on the way to the hospital that the teacher had hit him with a ruler, and the hospital’s medical staff also stated a pencil could not have caused the injury.
“He did admit he was playing around, and the teacher was yelling at him and frustrated because he was not listening,” the mother told the news outlet. After two days of back-and-forth with the school, she reported the alleged assault to the Miami Gardens police, which prompted an evaluation by Child Protective Services. The boy then demonstrated to investigators how Nicholson allegedly struck him, according to news outlets, and the mother provided police with a video of her son repeating the same story.
Nicholson turned herself in on Jan. 9 and left a Florida jail the next day after posting a $5,000 bond. Although she was ordered to stay away from the boy, she is free to continue teaching.
“I’m not going to order her that she can’t work in her profession because this could be an isolated incident,” the judge said in court, according to WSVN.
She added, “No matter how frustrated you are, you shouldn’t take it out on that child, to where now this child, it could’ve been his eye; it was so close to his eye. Then he would have been blind for the rest of his life. Then what?”
Given the severity of the incident, many are questioning why she’s still allowed to teach while the case is pending.
“10 to 20 maximum security, hard labor! Look at that baby’s injury! This person is dangerous and needs to be behind bars. Due process my eye! Protect society from persons of this type,” exclaimed another. “She did that to my child, she wouldn’t of made it to a court hearing..” wrote one X user.
“She should be in prison,” another person chimed in.
The victim’s mother told news outlets her son is recovering, and she has since pulled him from the school.
