Two women are wanted over a horrific attack on a three-year-old boy at the Georgia Baptist Church daycare where the couple works.
According to the Clarkston Police Department, Bernetta Glover and Autumn Coney are currently being charged with first degree child abuse in an incident that occurred on July 6, 2022 at Clarkston First Baptist Academy.
Krystin Collier told WSB-TV, an affiliate of Atlanta ABC, that her 3-year-old son came home from daycare on the day in question with a swollen jaw and was visibly upset.
A clip of the video shows one of the two women grabbing Collier’s son as he walks past her.
She is then seen pulling the boy up – Collier claims by one of his ponytails and shirt collar.
The boy stays in the air for a few seconds, with Collier claiming that the woman holding him slapped her son on one side of her body, then the other side.
Collier said the video made her physically ill the first time she saw it.
“He was very, very emotional that day, aloof,” she told Atlanta’s CBS affiliate WGCL. “He was missing a shoe; he was very disheveled.’
Eventually, the concerned mother demanded video footage of what happened that day. What she saw shocked and infuriated her.
“I’m very disgusted, very disappointed, because this is a church daycare,” Collier told WSB. “I entrusted my child to these people.”
This poor quality security camera clip shows the moment Krystin Collier’s three-year-old son was picked up, punched and shaken by two women who work at their local Baptist church’s daycare
Collier, pictured, called police when she saw the attack on her son, which left him suffering from a swollen jaw and serious anxiety
The boy was immediately pulled from the daycare and some footage was shared with WSB.
In one video, “an adult appears to be picking up the child by the arms and then by his shirt and throwing him to the ground,” the TV network reported.
“One of the teachers picks my son up from one side of her body and smacks him on the other side of her body, I guess to get him to calm down,” Collier told WSB-TV reporter Audrey Washington.
A lawyer for the mother said there was at least one additional video showing another employee interacting with the boy.
The daycare center pictured above where the attack took place is now under investigation, with an arrest warrant issued for the two alleged perpetrators
A reporter from WSB had a door slammed in her face after trying to confront staff about the horrific clip earlier this weekend
Details from court documents purport to describe this additional abuse.
According to a police report from The Atlanta Journal Constitution, the child’s grandmother pulled him out of daycare and was the first to notice that something was wrong because the child was “visibly upset” and “didn’t seem like himself.” The grandmother then asked to speak to a teacher, but that went nowhere because she said she was concerned the teacher “would fight with her,” reported WAGA, an Atlanta Fox affiliate.
Collier herself noticed bruises on her son’s arm, and the video request was made. The family say the church initially tried to downplay what happened; A supervisor allegedly said the footage showed nothing “unacceptable”. The family vehemently disagreed.
According to the police report obtained by the local newspaper and WAGA, two teachers pushed the child onto a class mat, pulled her up by her hair, threw her into a corner, punched her repeatedly and punched her repeatedly.
According to the police, the abuse happened repeatedly within three hours.
“The staff slapped my child in the face, grabbed him by his ponytail and walked him around like it was a leash,” Collier told WGCL. “I saw her grab his top ponytail, throw him against the wall and smack him in the face.”
“I feel so bad for him, and this is the first time he’s been in daycare,” she continued. “It’s a church. This is a church and I have trusted the church.’
According to DeKalb County Jail records verified by Law&Crime, as of this writing, none of the women charged in connection with the incident had been arrested.