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The Learning Lab (Justin Barnes).
An Illinois father posted surveillance footage he says shows a day care worker forcing his 4-year-old son into a garbage can.
Police in the village of Homewood arrested Anna Petrou, 58, for one misdemeanor count of endangering the life of a child. They claim that right before the garbage incident, she had put the same child in an alley outside for about 20 seconds amid approximately 19-degree weather. Officers said she did all this as “a form of punishment.”
Footage shows a child in a blue shirt jumping around. A woman is seen walking up to him, grabbing him by the arm, and walking him over to a wall, where she picks him up and lowers him into a white garbage can. He was inside for several minutes, appearing to sit for much of the time. Eventually, the woman drops what seems to be something like a blanket on top of the container to cover him up. Finally, she takes off the blanket and lets the child out of the garbage can.
The boy’s dad, Justin Barnes, wrote on Facebook that his son has “a medical condition that can be triggered by stress.”
“After investigation, it was confirmed that one of the day care workers placed my child inside a garbage can for nearly four minutes and covered his head with a blanket simply because he refused to take a nap,” he wrote. “While the employee claimed this was a joke, the video footage clearly shows my child in visible distress, struggling against this humiliating treatment. This not only traumatized my child but also posed a serious risk to the emotional well-being of the other children who witnessed this appalling behavior. Additionally, it is alarming that another staff member was present and chose to do nothing to intervene.”
The day care in question, The Learning Lab in the 18700 block of Dixie Highway, did not immediately respond to a Law&Crime’s request for comment.
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