A Manhattan mom claims that a teacher's aide at an Upper West Side elementary school locked her son in a small locker, resulting in him breaking his finger. Yaashia Harris, who is suing the city for $1 million, claims that 31-year-old Jeremy Turner locked her 8-year-old son—who has a speech impediment and attention deficit disorder—in the locker several times at Mickey Mantle Elementary School last January as a form of punishment.
"[He] was so terrorized while locked in the locker, screaming, frantically punching the locker in an effort to get out—that when I took him to the hospital, they diagnosed that he had fractured his right ring finger," Harris says in the lawsuit.
Harris didn't learn about the lockers until January 27th, after the incident in which her son hurt his finger trying to escape. According to a school report, Turner had locked the child in there after he had acted out in class "by drawing on his own face with a marker, yelling loudly, and kicking a teacher." The child told his mother that he had been put in the locker by Turner at least two other times, and Turner allegedly locked three other children in the lockers that day.
Turner was fired from the school in April and has been charged with misdemeanor counts of assault, unlawful imprisonment and endangering the welfare of a child. The victim, who has limited mobility in his hand, has transferred schools and is undergoing counseling for trauma.
